commissioner Graham present Commissioner Hutton absent Commissioner Skinner Commissioner Needham yeah commissioners councilmember Smith absent Commissioner Slavik yeah commissioner uphill commissioner get Randall councilmember Bannister here commissioner callewaert chair Brown here commissioner over Peck and Commissioner murski here here I believe you have a corns great so do you all have a copy of the agenda are there any sort of motion - does anybody want to add anything to the agenda or lead anything do I have a motion to accept it yes sir so move second all in favor say aye hi okay we'll move to the minutes from our last meeting on December 5th are there any suggested amendments to the minutes as written okay do I have a motion to accept the minutes a second second woloson seconds who approve say aye okay now it's time for public commentary if you wish to make a comment please step up to the microphone and state your name and I guess not so let's proceed that's close to public commentary and go to unfinished business can you hear me now oh I'm sorry okay so so did you hear that I opened the floor for public commentary okay yeah so please state your name and now you have three minutes and I would just like to say that any resolution that does not strongly phase-out if not completely ban the use of a lot of the very very very toxic chemicals and toxic pesticides that are in use it really is unconscionable we cannot rely on our federal government we can't rely on our state government the EPA is dead the city needs to take a stand become the the green city that it often proclaims to be and replace turf grass with wildflowers and natural fauna that then the natural flora that then the pollinators and birds and I'll have a place to thrive and there are some comments in some of the papers saying that yes it is true that some pesticides are toxic but that these things are not in heavy use and that is outright false that's just totally false and the city just really needs to step forward show some courage and do the right thing and that's just that's just the bottom line is resident I expect this city to care about the health of our water our air our ground and ourselves and unless we move in this direction we are not doing it and that's all I have to say thank you all right thank you does anybody else wish to make a public comment okay I guess we'll close the public comment period and move on to the unfinished business which is a IPM resolution I hear there's a presentation I'm sorry Oh is there a presentation oh okay so yeah all right so we have a coffee we have a copy of the resolution that was submitted by and danced or a few days ago I think it's been updated repeatedly over the last couple of days so I think how many of you all have seen the update song there was some emails going around so okay so let's see do we have so do we know any let's see handouts over here they represent one that so may need a minute probably need some amendments I am looking for it right now so give me a minute I guess one of them one of the complications is because of the Open Meetings Act we have to publish you know we have to post online the current document that we're gonna be considering so so this just complicated things a little bit we'll get - okay all right I wanted to start with the document that was circulating by email I think yesterday late yesterday and only today which isn't the version that we have printed out here so yeah sorry so Emily you did you made some amendments to a boat that was never posted on I posted it about half an hour okay so it's unregistered now the version that you saw on my computer okay those are we everyone to access it just on their computers right now I can print okay should I should we print out copies I can print up the copy yep I will go to register and print up copy all right I mean in the interest of time I can kind of start soon yes why don't you introduce this reduces health because the the edits made were kind of in the same vein as the overall thrust of this resolution first of all my name is Alana Jerry G I'm here to introduce the resolution on your agenda tonight several different organizations have collaborated on this including members of the environmental commission members of the parks department and members of our organization which is called pesticide-free Ann Arbor so as a Ann Arbor citizens we appreciate all the work that parks department and Knapp does to maintain beautiful and accessible parks and natural areas throughout the city well at the same time minimizing the use of pesticides through their environmentally responsible integrated pest management program and everybody who is here last month was able to see their presentation about kind of what they're doing to reduce pesticide use and the parks department has also been able to reduce some turf grass areas by converting these areas into more natural grasslands which use less water and don't require any chemicals to maintain I think for the most part except for in the case of invasive species and so we are also concerned about the continued maintenance of large areas of turf grass throughout the city and the use and overuse of harmful pesticides on these areas a growing body of scientific evidence has shown the harmful effects certain pesticides have on people pets and critical insect populations some lawn chemicals like life estate have been linked to cancer and have been shown to harm developing fetuses others like the Anika - noise are linked to massive die-offs in honeybee and other pollinators with these concerns in mind we developed this resolution to help educate annarbor residents about the parks department integrated pest management program and their best practices the resolution asks the part the parks department to create materials to show how they've been able to reduce turf grass and maintain grass without the use of pesticides these materials can then be distributed to property and business owners throughout the city the resolution also asks the city to compile a list of property owners of large turf grass areas so that we can distribute these materials to individuals and businesses that can make the biggest impact they were to reduce their turf grass and/or eliminate the use of pesticides we join a growing number of municipalities including Portland Maine and LA County in looking for ways to reduce or even eliminate the use of certain pesticides we believe it is in our community's best interest to act on what is known as the precautionary principle which is that you wait you don't wait for the chemical to be proven harmful before you act so like in the EU for example you have to prove that the chemicals safe instead of in here we hear the u.s.
good morning Bigelow today is January 27 2012 this is the 96th day of school this is whe news I'm living and I have energy mozzarella sticks mix when she goes carrot sticks fresh apples and milk tomorrow for breakfast there will be scrambled eggs and sausage patty fresh fresh apples Sun set juice and milk we have some friends elevating their face IAS and Madeleine and come get the office to the government yesterday's like that question was that what animal is the mascot for chick-fil-a the answer is a cow price there is Michael III boyfriend come to the office stupid okay this funds that question is and then trolls movie what is the name of the American who has a crush on the on cream crystal I'm number to write your answer neatly and include your neighbors we have a special announcement are you looking for something to do this Friday after school you will not want to miss out on this Friday night out is 3:30 to 5:00 there will be snacks and games hang out with friends and teachers bring bring money for snacks thank you and bring your permission slips ASAP you do not want to miss out on this night of fun and games so or I will be there at all mostly all teachers we have another special announcement no wonder for the picnic table drives for this week are calyx and to reading Kaylee too kindly to stop but Canada to Lancaster third grade Annabelle three merits at Harris three boyfriend Alice three Glover for woods and fourth grade Angie me for what it's a joke for mr.
we kind of wait until there's enough cases of certain diseases and then we act so we believe it is simply too soon to tell whether many of the over 85 thousand different chemicals registered by the EPA are actually safe as in the case of pee fest we were told these chemicals were safe only to learn too late that they're actually posing a great risk to our drinking water we believe in the same will most likely be shown to be true for many of these pesticides and so we believe that we need to take a stronger stance against the use of chemicals and a way to do that as well as to just reduce turf grasses in general that requires pesticides so this is kind of a two pronged resolution that asks Parks Department to help us educate the city about how we can both reduce large turf grass areas and reduce the use of chemicals on these areas and so we thank you very much for all your time and consideration and for the members who worked closely with us on this and we would love to answer any questions or kind of help flush this out as we decide how to proceed while Anne's making printed copy I can read out the resolution I think there's the title in the memorandum I don't believe it changed there was a typo in the title that I just took out the word of yeah okay so the changes were made in the you know in the body of the resolution itself so the this is the most recent version we have so I'm going to read it out to everybody whereas the city of Ann Arbor sustainability sustainability framework contains the healthy ecosystems goal to conserve protect and Hance and restore our aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and whereas this Ann Arbor City Council designated Ann Arbor as a bee City USA and is committed to working towards a pollinator friendly community with the creation of a pollinator subcommittee where as to that end the Natural Area preservation and Parks Department have adopted an environmentally responsible integrated pest management program that reduces both pests and pesticide risks by incorporating low risk control options and whereas the city of Ann Arbor wishes to promote land care practices that minimize the need to apply pesticides to control unwanted pests and whereas large areas of turf grass throughout the city continue to be treated by property owners with harmful pesticides and whereas the use of pesticides has been known or suspected to cause harm to people pets and pollinators and it's not necessary to grow and maintain green lawns and ornamental landscapes given the availability of viable alternative practices and products and whereas the maintenance of turf grass on large areas through the city requires excessive water and energy and is inconsistent with the city's sustainability framework goal of maintaining healthy ecosystems and appropriate stewardship of our natural resources being resolved that the environmental commission urges the city to compile educational material about current Parks Department Parks Department integrated pest management IPM best practices and circulate these materials in the community resolved that the environmental commission urges the city to identify owners of large turf grass property that's defined as one acre in size or larger for the purpose of outreach and education resolved that the environmental commission urges the city to examine the possibility of implementing a certification program for chemical-free lawns that meet the standards set forth by the parks department IPM and resolved that the environmental commission urges the city to encourage residents business owners and especially entities with large property holdings to not only use IPM but also reduce turf grass and replace it with diverse natural plantings so that's the resolution as it's been prepared so far yeah thanks for making the coffee I think it needs to be introduced and seconded and then we can have discussion right someone needs to introduce the res the resolution it needs to be seconded and then can be discussed okay discussion no one to say oh yeah any nays okay do you want to start off the discussion or or okay well I have a question do we have a statement from Parks about this you know usually when where we resolving something that has to do with solid waste and has to do with energy that has to do with Public Works we hear from those folks I'm wondering if we've got a statement from them and supported this resolution yes Colin a lot yes we don't we don't have a statement from them but we were in a meeting with several of the with Colin Smith and Dave borneman yeah and I have spoken with Scot Spooner and so they helped us to kind of draft this or two we talked directly with them like what would you know what would it take how many man-hours would it take for you to kind of do this type of project and and they were amenable to it being like if it were you know if they were directed to by City Council kind of the way it runs down the like the work chain that they would be able to to accommodate this but we haven't you don't have an official's I have a brief go ahead Bob um I just wanted to offer a a hopefully friendly amendment to the resolution which i think is great um I would like to suggest as the second resolved clause just in addition saying resolved that the city adopts it follows these IP on best practices on all city-owned properties I think it's great that parks is doing them but there are an awful lot of city-owned properties that parts does not control and I think these practices would be good for that would be in the first result I would make it a second result do you mind passing down the text or reading it out loud again sure result that the city adopts and follows these ipm best practices on all city-owned properties [Applause] I remember that being part of the discussion during their presentation yeah if they don't maintain several little city-owned properties I have a couple of brief comments I was involved in some of the email exchanges leading up to the final version of the resolution I appreciate the changes one thing that I'd like to put out there for discussion is the possibility of striking [Music] references specifically to city of Ann Arbor best practices I'm sure to some degree or maybe even to a large degree the city's best practices are based on what they've done in terms of looking at what other entities have done so far but my sense is is that it would be worthwhile in creating materials for outreach that we just simply provide best practices period whether they come from the city of Ann Arbor or they come from Knapp where they come from local or other landscaping landscape architecture companies botanist whatever and there may be some really good material that we can get from someplace else in the country photographs case studies etc so my proposal would be a friendly amendment that in the title we just simply say materials about integrated best plant pest management best practices and can cross out Knapp turfgrass reduction strategies and then in the resolution itself the other one in the first resolved statement basically the same thing resolved and then strike current parks department integrated or just current parks department so what about integrated pest management best practices and circulate these materials and I think everything else can remain the same including Bob our commissioner items friendly amendment I don't know if there's any comment from any Commissioner or from the audience about that proposal thank you want to get a second for these amendments yeah then you can vote on the amendments okay so we've had the first amendment suggested by Bob Needham um is there any further discussion on that amendment before we vote on it all who approve worse being of Commissioner negan's great it was covenant yeah any do I have a vote Paul who approved of adding bought leaders amendment which was just suggesting that the city adopt these practices and all city-owned properties not just those that the city is maintaining themselves so all who approve I'll say aye aye any opposed abstain okay so then the second proposed amendment that cha was advanced by John mirskiy on a title change striking current parks department and nap in the title and then striking current Parks Department in the first result clause which makes it basically neutral does it mean that the recommendations can't be based on current press practices but it opens up the door to looking elsewhere but there has to be some Authority for whoever issues them well so the city is is tasked with doing this so the the the task remains the same and the task is not now according to my proposal wouldn't be just to simply pick up I mean they could choose to do it just pick up what they have right now and use those but it opens the door to looking elsewhere and including those in outreach materials and education etc any comments just so you all know I have a dog in this pie so to speak I do laundry duction in environmental restoration as part of my work so yeah just full disclosure here will not be voting on anything that encourages the city to promote this okay all right thanks Mike thanks bye so I saw some we did you have on an edition can you come up to that podium please I'm Rita Mitchell I'm one of the cofounders of be safe in Arbor and I'm also part of pesticide-free Ann Arbor and a question I have is is your expanding the use of these practices which i think is a great went to all of the city departments is there a responsible you know will the process be transferred from parks to and other Department as opposed to having a purse responsible for managing all of the city properties is that something that you all need to consider I mean my thinking and bringing the amendment was that the parks would share their information with the other departments right okay I just want to be sure that that we don't put a load on on parks that is not right helpful to them at the same time I'd truly appreciate your suggestion in that amendment I find I concur with commissioners Needham's if I were to read that I would interpret it the same way that all were asking is that the same practices be applied on all properties and it's up to whoever whichever entity is responsible for maintaining those to apply those practices so it's no additional burden on parks it's just that those practices would be applied uniformly across all properties and just on parks and natural natural I just thought maybe it would be good to be explicit about that if I can jump in real quick I think of the city administrator would be the one who would be responsible for figuring out which department for implementation for this so I wouldn't think you would necessarily need to add that into the resolution and it just is assumed that if City Council instructs the city administrator to and the city staff to do something he'll be the one to sort of figure out who's going to do it best okay is there any more discussion about the proposed by mirskiy so we do we need to vote on the entire okay we go through the amendments one by okay good poses so I apologize for missing the meeting when when when this is hammered out and secondly I was not working today with the current resolution I don't know how I missed that also but I did be sure you're close to that Mike and the weeds are a bit complicated whereas number four whereas the city venable we should promote lawn care practices since most of this resolution is talking about lawns grass not the wider discussion on dealing with pests and trees etc whereas large areas of turf grass throughout the city continue between about property owners with harmful pesticides I don't think that's an accurate statement or more importantly it's not one that's likely to be accepted by the many businesses that serve our community who don't think they're putting harmful pesticides on grass and it's not just large areas these pesticides if you don't like them are being put on small grass areas much less than an acre primarily it's not the size of the grass areas on which pesticides are being placed it's that we have way too much grass which is out there for looks and not function and so I might amend that that one was there before so are you I'm the fifth whereas are you proposing in strike large areas whereas turf grass throughout the city continues I would change it entirely to a different thrust whereas it is evident that many areas of lon across the city could be greatly reduced in size resulting in very considerable cost savings in water use in fossil fuel use and in the use of pesticides that doesn't step on people's toes and it does where we really want to go which is a sustainability goal the resources we spend on grass that's really not needed for recreational purposes in Ann Arbor is ridiculous and we can get rid of the pesticides at the same time we get rid of grass so let's see so we're thinking about we're thinking about amending the fifth warehouse statement large areas of turfgrass or you'd like to strike that and propose an alternative I would suggest that strongly do you mind passing that down if you're or do you have others have others but you can do that one first if you like no I don't you do all of yours together it's my lair I need to adjust my my to fit the resolution I haven't seen so let me have the time while you work on this one do you mind passing it down so I can work on that one thank you okay great thank you so sorry should I go on or do you want to deal with the fifth one first cause five first odo you don't have to wait for me oh okay so yeah what's the next job so Clause 6 has changed since the one I saw and there are more that weren't there before most of which are fine I think except for the one acre in size constraint and Clause 9 resolved I think we need to apply this everywhere to everyone and really work to and work with the applicators that work in the city and somehow with home owners to agree on what best management practices and good integrated pest management procedures would be we this what works for parks is not going to be very good for people at want green lawns with no weeds because a lot of the parks grass areas have a lot of dead lions and a lot of other invasive weeds in them and you can't sort of pulling them by hand in a much more expensive procedure get them out so there's there needs to be a process not that the city decides but that we work with the especially with the applicators because they know a lot more than homeowners do how do we how do we get them all to subscribe to an agreeable course of action that has them advocating to their clients a routine that minimizes the use of pesticides and fertilizers and that's a little different from what this language says yeah and so I'm sorry we're getting in the weeds where I haven't even figured out the wording yet I have a proposal and I hope this is acceptable to everybody I don't think that we should be rewriting and wreak rafting a resolution during a meeting right I think my perception is that this resolution has broad support among the Commission I believe some of the ideas that Commissioner Graham proposed be added also strengtheneth and would also be supported by the Commission and so my recommendation would be that we table this that we work to incorporate Commissioner Needham's and my amendment also those that are being contemplated by Commissioner Graham maybe there's some additional insights that also happen in the community now that we've discussed this and we take that input and then have something that's a final draft for consideration by the Commission in the next meeting it is difficult to go through a lot of this in the time that's allocated to us now but you know it seems to me that it's you know it's always a difficult it's always difficult to try to capture more and more detail than more and more specifics I think part of the part of a resolution such as this and it's just a set broad policy broad policy points and I'd get too much into the individual details so I agree with the sentiment myself but I'm wondering we've already spent like and many months I think going over this and in different different meetings so I'm hoping that maybe we can resolve it at this meeting [Music] I agree that um I think the idea is to develop a positive approach in the city to building sustainable practices around pests around pesticides use and I have other things to say but go ahead councilman well I was just gonna agree with chair Brown that I know what it's isn't optimal to be making these amendments as we are but we did get a flood of good ideas just in this week and the concern is that if we postpone to our February 27 meeting we are maybe getting too close to getting the word out and missing the 2020 season so that would be in favor than of pressing through tonight and then even Commissioner Graham's suggestions could maybe be added in the process like at the for the council resolution at that time could be late could be added as an amendment then it wouldn't be the pure environmental Commission original one from today if we pass this today but we could still get those in perhaps I might like to just suggest that since the focus of this seems to be on large turfgrass areas most areas of turf grass in the city that are over an acre are also going to be professionally managed by bringing in a professional lawn manager who I am NOT you might be able to get some ideas about low-hanging fruit for pesticide reduction I would say it is far better to come late to the 2020 season with a great idea than to forge ahead with something that as Chris mentioned in his email might offend people or might just seem out in left field and seem unattainable I think the opportunity would be to make better policy than speedy policy on this that's my two cents from somebody who's going to abstain from the vote any way I can I say something I think that this resolution is broad enough that it can be tailored and if we Rhian reactivate this pollinators working group this is something that they can work on with the city and talk to professionals talk to maybe some large rental companies and large property owners and this is an opportunity for the pollinator working group to help the city do something that they might not otherwise have the resources to do but I think that this is a broad enough resolution and it gets us going in the right direction I have a question of council member of an astir if we adopt this as is do you still have the opportunity to take this to Council with minor revisions I mean this doesn't you can say that we passed a revision resolution and say that there was additional input that was taken and included in the resolution that's now before you and then council can pass that without having to wait a month and then another two or four weeks after that for council to consider it yes I think that that would not be out of order to tab to do with that as you described so that would be a compromise that means we could vote on something tonight tonight knowing it's 90 percent of what we want knowing there's a couple of concerns potentially that Commissioner Graham has those could be worked on with council member Bannister and some other representatives in the community and that could be done within the next couple of weeks and then the final or a revised version of this could be brought and introduced by Councilman or member Bannister to in a council meeting and that way we hopefully cover all of all of the points to me that sounds like a reasonable compromise I mean if Chris and and okay well not just us too but yeah right well not just here yeah elana going Alana and Graham so I think it's the I mean I guess your concern seemed kind of like a separate maybe like a separate issue the idea of like working with applicators are working with professional management companies I mean these are companies that their whole business model is selling pesticides so I think that's a little bit at odds with our idea which is using some thing that the parks department created because they don't have a vested interest in passes and selling pesticides and so by using their model and bringing it straight to you know property management companies you can save water you can save money you don't have to go through pesticide companies or you know lawn care companies that are the holes into Pacifica site companies in order to get the kind of lawns that I think people in an hour actually want and I think it does take a little bit of culture change I agree that it's not gonna be a pristine lawn that you're used to but I think when you when presented with the facts of kind of the give-and-take of like you know do I want these chemicals or do I want a few dandelions I think that a lot of being Arbor residents do want to be able to make that choice thank you there's a big outreach and education component to this resolution has to be yeah and there's a part of me that takes a bit of offense to your comment yeah as the person who is you know as Chris may also be as a licensed pesticide applicator but not so much that because we don't do this to sell the pesticide applications we do this to be able to get a certain job done in my case it is you know exotic invasive species control you know I spent the first 10 years of my career doing organic invasive species management and all of those places took another decade of work to be able to go back and actually finish the work there were not organic techniques that worked to be able to get that job done so I changed my mind and my approach to be able to use tools that would actually work to restore the earth sorry those concerns from the parks department as well and Knapp as well and so this is not about invasive species so we would we just want to talk like this is about lawns this is like when you drive down Packard and you see you know the ponds at Georgetown or whatever that big apartment complex is and you just see lawn and lawn and lawn and then and you see the little sign that says pesticides have been applied here so these are the the point of this is a kind of low-hanging fruit of like this is just a huge swath of land by the roadside there isn't anything native growing there there's not it's not necessarily an invasive species it's just turf grass and is there a way to kind of keep them from just spraying you know right there on the on the huge area of want so that's kind of how we develop this is like what's the what would be the most effective the most like someone mentioned low-hanging fruit and we work closely with Shannon Gibbs Randall get Brandel as well you know got her buy-in and so I just think that maybe there's some confusion about like what we're targeting we're not targeting pesticide applicators who are working on an invasive species this is more like true Green comes to your neighborhood you know is that and like I say I'm thinking if you sort of increase your outreach to be able to look at the broad swath of lawn care companies that are out there there are many that are out there that are not trying to sell yet another chemical application process yeah and that's what that's where I would encourage you to get out of your own silo here and start to look a little bit more broadly at the full spectrum of what people are trying to do in terms of caring for their property I just think you're a fundamental due respect I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding what we're trying to do here and that we reached out to you several times and asked for your input so for you to come back now and say that this is you know hasty policy instead of good policy it's just you know it's like difficult to hear that now when we would have appreciated your input earlier also I just think this is not I think we're talking apples and oranges and I mean it would be great to have the opportunity to like hash this out more in a separate meeting I guess but I think this it does have the broad strokes that we want in order to just to get more education out to the community about certain types of harmful pesticides that maybe people don't actually want on their lawns I know this is all very unusual well Chris hey this is difficult it's delicate the state has been protecting lawn care companies quite deliberately they do not want those businesses banned we are not able to go from where we are now to a policy in Ann Arbor that says we shall not permit pesticides to be put on lawns in this city we're not able to do that but that's not what this says it is not what this says but the motivation behind some of the language here seems to me to be saying that and what some of the suggestions I made was that soften that portion of the language that's stepped on those toes and to try to instigate not just parks department policy which is not going to be satisfactory that to the many people in our brother want bright green grass with no weeds and include the people will really understand what they're doing out there with these things bring them to the table and devise a policy for Ann Arbor that minimizes the use of these pesticides they're not going away secondly and more importantly I believe we can make far more progress on that subject as well as the larger sustainability subject if we really focus our efforts on getting people to get rid of so much turf grass period and that's not here no it is exactly that's the last Rose result though wait a second or a second I mean our bylaws well I'm not sure it's our bylaws but we have to restrict public commentary to the public comment period but I appreciate what you said because you've played an active role in drafting this resolution so so I'm happy to go forward tonight with it again the general perspective that we would like to have less pesticide use in Ann Arbor and less turfgrass in Ann Arbor is a good one it's a great one no doubt about it no I mean I would agree but Tom you know in this resolution as it's written now seems to embody like that spirit and it is difficult getting through all of the legal ramifications here so I was just whispering with with Bob here and a question that I would have then is would would this receive broader support if we or or is it getting into maybe more difficulties if we just eliminate all references to large he just crossed out in our when I was just whispering with Bob here large in resolved Clause number six that's the last one which would also then mean in resolved Clause number five we would cross out large areas of and it would just say we're as turf grass throughout the city you wouldn't have to add it s to continues in resolved clause number two we would cross out large and we would also cross out one acre in size or larger and then we would cross out large in the last result clause and none of this is dictating anything so we're just basically asking that there's outreach and education to the community as a whole I think obviously in the implementation of this the first phase can be targeted according to the 80/20 rule the 20% of properties that maybe have that 80% of impact the same things with applicators etc so there still it still leaves a lot of room open for how this is then finally implemented but what it does is we move with this it gets in count in front of council and it gives an opportunity for this to get out into the community as a council Minutemen council member Bannister said before the 2020 season what do people think of that and if that sounds reasonable that now formalize it with a with another friendly amendment to me that seems reasonable and I I'm reading this as an education and outreach so I'll repeat it Emily do I need to redeem dinner together yeah so in results applause number five we would say we're as turfgrass throughout the city continues to be treated by property owners with harmful pesticides and we would strike large areas of in resolved Clause number two we would strike the word large after the city urged urges the city to identify owners of turf grass property it's probably most of us but it would just cross I would strike out large and strike out one acre in size or larger so it basically then applies citywide and then finally in the last resolved clause strikes the word large well actually I guess we would strike out encourages residents and then we have to have and business owners and then strike out and especially entities with large property holdings it would simply say then resolved environmental Commission urges the city to encourage residents and business owners to not only use IPM but also reduce reduce turf grass and replace it with diverse national natural plantings I think that's the message we want to send not prescriptive outreach and educational it allows us to implement this in a targeted way and it allows us to do it in time for 2020 do you mind passing down your proposed amendment at all thank you that's that gets me to shut up because I won't be able to refer to anything anymore any other ideas in this in this role thank you sorry about the weeds I'm pretty happy with all this call it question okay well you had Christopher you have Commissioner Graham's amendment a couple of amendments in there do you want to one only I think and then John the one only was changing land the word land and then cause Florida lawn okay otherwise John's okay but I also have you deleting I think it's the six square as Clause large areas of turf grass that one and then I had you reading I mean we changed that don't know so there were two well and then so then you added another whereas clause talking about savings and water use fossil fuel use and the as'f esta sides and then I thought you were gonna be deleting the following whereas Clause the use of pesticides has been known or suspected to your right so I substituted a new one for Clause five other than changing law lon plant alone in clause for substituting whereas it is evident that many areas of law and across the city could be greatly reduced resulting in very considerable cost savings and water use fossil fuel use mowing etc and the use of pesticides and then you added whereas the use of pesticides has been oh you deleted the following one about the use of pesticides has been known to or suspected I didn't think that one changed at all it didn't okay I it's different than it was in the notes I was making to people so I won't pursue that okay you have my copy to family I believe I do have your copy would you like it back no proposed I like that amendments in the in the positive approach that that sort of Reece says the same thing but said it in a more reason the reason why we're doing it instead of just harmful pesticide if that's a negative or offensive word okay let's see I mean I just say that I think this just underscores the need to maybe have have this all done you know well before the meeting and have the final version submitted at least like three or four days before the meeting so that so that this doesn't happen as a regular course of practice just from a practical point of view and that you know and we'll never be able to come up with something that's totally comprehensive here but I think this is a great first approach you know to encourage in the city to do some outreach and education on minimizing turf grass as well as not spreading Cometh is being very considerate in the in the pesticides that you're using okay so is there any further discussion on this resolution or the amendment yeah yeah we haven't done the amendment yet so if there's no further discussion on the amendment do I have a to approve this resolution as amended although approved I understand sure okay all right so it passes okay so let's see let's move on the agenda we need to vote on the whole thing I'm sorry do we have any more discussion on the whole resolution anybody I think you've all done a lovely job in terms of making this seem less antagonistic most large lawn owners seem very attached to it and writing a proposal that introduces that there are alternatives seems to be a a better use of City time I would say then telling them how wrong they are because I seem it seems to me that that's a that's a sure way to not get very far and I hope you will accept that as you know catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar in this instance in my experience yeah yeah I also think that the certification program would be a great idea to reward people for a good behavior rather than we should always have carrots not just sticks and and I would agree and I think this is a good opportunity for the pollinator except 22 2014 that regard yeah okay so let's see do I have a motion for to accept this resolution your councilmember banister in a second okay okay all who approve of this resolution has amendment say aye aye what abstention okay so it passes its passed as amazing okay well there's been a lot of work put into this and I think I hope we could all be happy with it and that there's certainly a lot more work to be done so the next so now let's go on to new business the next item is workgroup goals for 2020 I'll begin as the besa League as the lead on the environment environmental Commission solid waste working group during the past year we've been done quite a lot of work around the SW RMP process that the city was you know was updating its strategic plan for dealing with solid waste and then there was a lot of discussion about the MuRF and things like that so one of our smart goals for the year was to do metrics to propose metrics for the city solid waste management elements of the sustainability dashboard as you all know the cities had a sustainability dashboard for since 2013 and there are metrics in there but they they have not been updated regularly and there's some confusion about how they're calculated so part of what we wanted to do is to propose metrics going forward for the sustainability dashboard to be updated quarterly and so this is what I handed out there was some spare copies up here if anyone in the audience would like to see them so the proposed metrics are material flow and tons by both sector residential and commercial and by waste stream and the grand total of the material flow to landfill tracts progress to its his long term zero waste goals of the city I have a question do you want me to wait until the end I'm just not sure how we can track construction and demolition waste last time I looked into it there's not no way unless we do like a permanent thing yeah I'm not sure if it's really I'm not sure if anybody really wants me to read through all of these they're all distributed but let me just say that the work group is meeting with city staff regularly once a month to to refine these and also it's a bit complicated because of these cities a 2-0 initiative there is a technical advisory committee that's working with materials which it will also be suggesting different metrics and gun goals for 2020 so in the area of solid waste there's a number of players here I'm not just the environmental commission that have been recently been engaging there's a new city solid waste manager named Eileen Naples who's just getting up to speed and so construction demolition were part of that discussion earlier today the city already is we're discussing whether you know quite a bit of the asphalt in the city is recycled you know you've seen that you've seen the trucks that grind it up and then take it off for processing and bring it back for new new roads so definitely one of the major some of the major areas here are trying to account for construction and demolition waste if I may weigh in briefly or sorry Steve do you want to finish your thought no that's that's it so we're not voting on anything this isn't that in the form of a resolution this is just a set of recommendations to the city specifically to the solid waste question the solid waste resource management plan proposal that's still in front of Council was tabled includes an element where C and D construction and demolition waste would start to be reviewed and analyzed and hopefully captured in that would lead to a metric like what's mentioned here so we recognise some of these things may not be able to be done immediately I'd also add we haven't really talked about which of these would actually be posted on the sustainability dashboard some of these may be indicators that are sort of in the background and maybe only one or two of these would actually be on the dashboard but the the proposal is is that the city would be using all of these to not only track outcomes and results for the city for example diversion rate but also looking at some of these other things that might also help them do things like optimize costs improve customer satisfaction and things like that so in this calculation of greenhouse gas emissions that are involved with recycling and landfill and things like that so what I really all I really wanted to say is that we've been working on these proposed metrics we have a list here a preliminary list and I think our major goal for this workgroup for the next year is to work with city staff flush it out a little bit more you know and and make it consistent with the zero waste goal long-term goal for the city as it's being defined by the a20 process are there any questions there's nothing to act on on this tonight uh no it's just a personal experience that I had that I've already brought up with the new solid waste coordinator about micro plastics and in the city mulch I got a very bad batch of mulch over the course of the summer and proceeded to inquire if we have any standards for what what makes mulch okay to sell or what makes it need to be converted to waste energy or sent to a landfill because certainly I am not enjoying picking up what I need to out there right now and it would I'm one of the few people that would actually get out there and do that so and certainly I would hate to be somebody who would sell back to somebody as a service as I imagine many landscape companies in town do I haven't heard back yet if there is a standard in the contract currently for how they are measuring assessing and reporting on micro plastics in the mulch but I will mention that to those of you that are on the solid waste committee in the hopes that you can keep this discussion going over time I've experienced the same thing so duly noted are you talking about remnants of plastic bags or micro plastics I guess you they'd be macro plastics this case because you see them yeah plastic bags yeah a lot of polyethylene films but also a lot of plant containers and a lot of plant tags pieces of edging okay Flags gas flags with the plastic sticks how big the whole flag no usually they're you know chunks out there chopped up so I wish they were the whole flags they'd be a lot easier to pick up and find that way but the question is are they screening as well as they have been traditionally you know I may have gotten the end of the screening I think they are screening all the time and I think this is a problem that they have all the time but yeah I may have just been the lucky person who got the end of the pile as opposed to the beginning of the pile so yeah I put that out there I don't know if it's in the contract but you know we do contract with Denali to be able to or what is it we care organics now so and I don't know if there's anything in that contract that says you know plastics and mulch they'll not exceed X Y or Z okay that's a good point anything else about solid waste issues that people want to flag okay so I think so and then the other issue that's come up is the regionalization of solid waste management through the WR mm a process so I think it would be I think the Commission should be paying attention to what can be done to get in Arbour engaged with this process so I don't know do you have anything any new information about that in not other than Howard Lazarus the city administrator did attend the wash in our regional Resource Management Authority meeting on December 16 and they were the group they're the members of the worm expressed hope that the city would join and but they weren't interested at this time in revising their proportional voting or their to they can Arbor more of a larger vote given the size of the population that we represent and and they weren't necessarily interested in the employee protections that that we do here in Ann Arbor with responsible contractor language and so forth so I was encouraging mr.
and Caleb or colloidal Scott and now we observe a very creative side ways to reflect under imitate submitted activities of their day please stand for the pledge I need you to love leg of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God everybody take responsibility take responsibility during work and play tears on civility and work and play I will be respect point all I do I will be respectful and all I do and be a star TT and Leah star the wall in Israel have a marvelous Monday remember life is tough but so are you thanks for watching
Lazarus to continue to attend their meetings or send a representative from city staff to attend their meetings and continue to work with them and their main focus according to mr.
Lazarus was policy and education this year so I think there's still time Oh the third issue about whether or not municipalities and other cities can bring their recycles to our MuRF whether that apparently that does not require a warm a style agreement that those other you know groups could come to us anyway it doesn't the brewer MoU with or without Orman does not preclude it and so the issue of them bringing contaminated recyclables to us can can and should be addressed anyway in any case okay all right well thank you yeah I did him one other update though this may or may not be the time but in regards to our food gatherers resolution that we had passed there were let me go I've actually wait for the reports from Council sure okay so I think that's all I have to say for the Saugus work group if there's no more questions let's move on to Crescent natural features natural features so you all asked that we develop an agenda for our committee for 2020 and I sent it to some of you and I just email it to Marv you there are five things none of which are easy develop and seek heritage tree amendments heritage tree amendments to chapter fifty fifty-five or the university development code or our body of development ordinances and that would probably mean expanding about upon the landmark tree list to include heritage trees which our trees probably have at least a larger size if not other criteria second develop and seek a tree protection amendments in Chapter 55 55 for trees not already regulated in the site development process we're losing a lot of trees in the city on single and two family properties that have building projects tear downs rebuilding projects or completely new subdivisions such as happened on Packard in a single family zone and there are some I think certainly a majority accounts of members who really want to regulate that big hole in our regulations will help with amendments which are ready for flood plain provisions in Chapter 55 they promise to be if I'm hearing Jerry Hancock correctly quite interesting and maybe a little controversial but I hope by now not develop sustainable landscape outreach model for two neighborhoods one with a significant chunk of native forest fragment and one hopefully nearby that was farm field in our history where the native forest floor of seed was destroyed in farming and fifth to seeking concerted effort by the city to accomplish an early update to the city's GIS woodland maps which date back to 1990s and we have bleeding green polygons on our woodland map from 1990 that don't distinguish between the buckthorn thicket and a high quality native forest fragment that's the best we have and this will take a chunk of money to accomplish hopefully and put our oar in the water about that in the budget and it probably requires a consultant who has a capability to fly probably more than once and this time unlike our normal procedures to fly for a storm our impervious service efforts flying during leaf on at maybe three times a year three times in a year so that we can get different read like reflectivity from leaves and be able to distinguish different at least communities from different reflectivity in the leaf different colors of green essentially and it would require a consultant who is able to do the computer processing and interpretation and field checking to rectify multiple images and make them read across the city all that's normal procedure it's just a different time of year with a different set of goals from what we normally do that's our five things thank you so thanks Chris let's see Susan's not here today she was the head of the water and water quality and stormwater management group so we'll wait for that we'll wait till the next meeting for that one see so the overall Commission goals for 2020 I think Darrin body right now within these work group goals because those are the workgroups that were set up last year are there any other work groups yeah we would like to I would like to reactivate the pollinator work group pollinator used to be pollinator subcommittee know be a working group and we'll come up with them our goals I just remind you that yeah last time I read the bylaws of the Commission I think it's only required to have one person on me we can have workers and it's only required to have we have some people in the audience that we can recruit yeah I think so so there Eddie does anyone wish to make a comment on Commission goals for 2020 or suggest any additional goals besides what have been mentioned so far okay so let's see we had an item on the agenda for metrics discussion I know for myself I wanted to talk about this for the solid waste working group these were what I had in mind was metrics for the sustainability sustainability framework that the city has so from my reading of it it looks like per the original time when these workgroups were set up last year it looks like we've kind of covered most of what the environmental Commission is supposed to look at but I think it would be useful maybe for all of us to review that just go and look at the city's website the sustainability framework and think about what what other areas we might think about getting engaged in I'd like to come in if I may you know be a broken record on this I'd like to remind the Commission and frankly um residents that a year ago roughly in February of last year I presented a topic board I called it regular review progress review of energy and environmental Commission smart goals in monthly meetings with a subtitled what gets measured and reviewed gets done and we talked about that at some length I pointed out the fact that the sustainability framework has seven environmental Commission related goals and statement that I made was it's important to review all goals and their indicators at least annually even if they aren't considered a high priority if an outcome degrades significantly the goals may need to be reprioritized and also targets need to reflect priorities etc I'd like to remind ourselves that we had as far as I know one review of goals last year and that was the review of greenhouse gas emissions which is actually the work of the Energy Commission not the environmental Commission so we've gone we went through all of 2019 without reviewing any goals or metric metrics that relate to outcomes tied to important environmental results or outcomes that we should be looking at for example we never had a formal review although the data is out there of solid waste metrics we talked about some of those today there's diversion rate information out there it's never been put and discussed in the public domain and presented we never had here a review of water quality or watershed we had a watershed metric review in 2018 is presented by the Han River watershed Council based on input that we gave I'm trying to develop an index that could be tracked and trended year-to-year we haven't had any review of any air quality metrics it seems to me that if we're serving the city we the city all of us working we need to be looking at what are we delivering and if we're making progress great if we're not making progress why and what do we need to do to get better like I said what get measured and reviewed gets done and if you're not doing that consistently then it's very likely that you're not making progress and I think solid waste is a great example of that we haven't had regular reviews of solid waste and in any formal way and our solid waste diversion rate is the same last year as it was in 2012 so I would just remind us of that and I think we all come here to make a difference and I would say we don't know because we haven't been reviewing things whether or not we're making a difference and one just last comment on this in the professional life that that I lived this is a bigger organization with formal processes I had a performance review every year I had to go into my performance review every year by the way it's not a not a an old-fashioned performance review this is a performance review to talk about how do we get better results myself my organization in supporting the rest of the organization so it's not something that's a wrap on the hand kind of thing but going into every one of those I had to right and accomplishment report and I think it would be helpful for this group to annually write our own accomplishment report what did we accomplish and some where some of our accomplishments are maybe writing and approving a resolution that's something but I would not say that's really significant accomplishments and I think we should look in the mirror once a year and really judge ourselves and say how are we doing and if we're not doing as well as we like then how do we improve that so that coming here and spending you know time every month and then in working group meetings we really think about how do we really provide and deliver value and benefits from the time that we invest you've heard it before sorry no I think I fully concur with John in fact I was we're jumping a little bit ahead but I was hoping that aren't the agenda for our February meeting was going to consist of exactly this well I'd be willing to work with others on drafting our accomplishment report I could put something together and send it out there and people could add to it strike whatever and then maybe we can review that as an agenda item in our February meeting and then talk about most importantly what do we do the same when we're doing something well and what do we do something bad what do we do differently to improve well this should be an ongoing process - it's not something the way and do it once a year in terms of metrics though are weren't we supposed to be getting updates from the solid waste stuff on on these numbers so we can actually measure our success you know the intent would be to invite them to present that where where it's appropriate so we would schedule a meeting where we would say in whatever month we want to review on the solid waste metrics that are available we generally know what they are and then we have a discussion about you know what's planned and what if anything the environmental Commission can do to contribute to the achievement of those goals yeah I'm just thinking like asking for some sort of regular report out rather than inviting them to a particular meeting just requiring monthly updates via email or something like that I think maybe monthly is going too far they quarterly sure let's try for quarterly before we go for a monthly let's try for once well this is already I was be happy with annual to start and then what we can do is this would be my suggestion when we review something for the annual result then we can discuss if this is going great then why do we need to spend a lot of time there's an hours on reviewing something quarterly when something's going well when when things are not going well those are the things you want to review quarterly or whatever maybe semi-annually so that you can intervene before you lose a whole year to something going bad no I I agree as a man once something is established but I think at the beginning it's good to have a quarterly process so that you can work out all the details you know about what do you think is valuable reporting what you know what the trends are things like but yeah what hopefully would just go it would eventually become an annual review this has already been discussed with the city solid waste staff because you know we had that whole that whole saga for years about the about the you know about the solid waste fund so that's definitely we have a lot of promises that that's going to happen every three months crust ins already done that over the last year so so hopefully we can all think about this and think about what we can do and and John were you thinking about just sticking with the sustainability framework as it currently exists as a starting point I mean we're not even doing that and frankly maybe we shouldn't do all of that to begin with you know if we just focus on a handful at least we start and we we tried the process and we say even from a process perspective is this working or not rather than agreeing to do all seven environmental metrics I would say we do three and try it out I mean the sustainability framework includes quite a lot of a lot of things that really aren't the purview of the environmental Commission they're more the purview of the Energy Commission or the Transportation Commission there are 16 sustainability framework topics I believe originally there were thirty something in the range of 30 some metrics and um you may recall there were as a Joint Commission that's now probably two years ago since its disbanded I should say a working group of the energy and environmental Commission that went through those and I think that's where I got the numbers that I mentioned a little while ago that there were seven environmental and three Energy Commission related framework goal and I don't I'm we proposed some metrics for each of those but like I said I think would be huge to try to work with all those let's take baby steps and and see how that works I mean some of the the big ones relate directly to what we're talking about here today solid waste water and watershed quality we had that we had you know there's a precedent for that and then maybe we do something on air quality and I think that has to be reported federally anyhow and maybe that's we just review that data or we say we don't have a working group maybe we don't do that maybe it's something related to I don't know the natural features group or something like that okay so well maybe you could send does everybody have a copy of that soft leave that the energy environment mission did a couple of years ago about that maybe John you could distribute that among the commissioners it's on register I could resend it again I think okay I don't get it it goes into minutes as a reminder I'll do that okay all right is there any other any other comments anybody wants to make about metrics or the Commission's role in tracking these metrics and helping set them okay so reports from committees one other comment if I made yourself to emphasize the point I'll use something outside of our purview but maybe something that all of us including residents can relate to you know the city can say we paved 20 miles or repave 20 miles of of streets and we that was great we completely met our plan we said we were gonna do 20 miles we did 20 miles well that's great but if 30 miles fall below the the standard of what we considered a good quality Road then the City accom pushed paving 20 miles but in the mean time 30 fell into disrepair and if you do that every year then you can't out the 20 that you paved but the 30 that fell into disrepair add up and add up and add up and that's what you have today so we have to frame our discussions around are we really making a positive impact on the bottom line and not just report on compliance or projects done or something like that did we deliver better quality of life and for the residents of Ann Arbor duly noted so okay so let's move on to reports from committees other Commission's Council and chair see my community parks okay let's see Shannon's mine okay so let's see Shannon's not here so she's our council I should do some energy briefly oh yeah energy sorry for talking all time I think maybe some interesting updates though Energy Commission had a report on initial studies and work towards a twenty five megawatt solar installation on property that's basically where the wheeler Center is and potentially longer-term parts of the landfill right now the landfill is not a priority because it's nesting habitat for a not endangered what's the right the next level down and threatened threatened the threatened species bird species so it's city-owned property but much of it is in pencil Township and so the city is working with pencil Township and with DTE the energy would be purchased by Pittsville township and the city for municipal operations potentially also at some point maybe in a community solar kind of thing but that's not allowed right now so work needs to be done to advance that we passed in the Energy Commission a resolution in support of ninety thousand dollars being allocated by the city to be able to do that so if anybody's interested in details they can go on the city's calendar legislature and look at that presentation excellent well done so one thing we were working on was a solar access ordinance and that sort of stuck in the mud right now with a lot of legal concerns so that's sort of been tabled we were still working on what's called an EB readiness ordinance I've talked about it here and that's basically now in final form it's been reviewed with a subset of the Planning Commission and with planning and the intent is to Emily do you know when we meet with was it set yeah we wanted to meet earlier but the earliest we could get in from Bret Leonard was in April and April okay thank you and there was a resolution that was proposed on banning new connections natural gas connections for new construction in support of the city's climate emergency and movement towards carbon neutrality by 2030 that was tabled for the time being there was some discussion about how what's that what's the impact going to be there's a fair amount of new construction but one of the big issues is all the built environment that's already in place there's some cities that are looking at even banning that entirely but with a due date so by 2040 or something like that all appliances would have to be replaced there may be other other ways of addressing this through permit fees or connection fees so that was tabled and then the last thing I think of interest solar installations we've been tracking this now for many years and last year we had by far the best year so just 2017 and 2018 had been prior than past years before that but we had roughly 35 permits for residential solar last year there was almost 90 and it was 88 and the number of kilowatts installed went up from roughly 250 kilowatts to almost 900 kilowatts so a really huge jump shows increased awareness shows prices are coming down shows that the fact that the property tax repeal is making a difference the only thing that I would remind people of is that the Energy Commission I'm talking about what gets measured gets done and holding a mirror up to our own work we said we wanted to install 2.3 megawatts per year Oh ten years so between 2015 and 2025 and last year was by far our best as I mentioned but we still only installed 900 kilowatts so we still we've much better and hopefully we can see exponential growth but we still are below our targeted rate that's it Thanks oh I mean the Ann Arbor Public Schools recently passed that millage part of the funding would be targeted towards sustainability such as maybe solar panels and things like that there any plans for the however how is the Energy Commission going to maybe interact with an urban public schools so I think through the overall a20 initiative there is a technical advisory committee that's working on projects we have representation from in our public schools on that Advisory Committee we have some projects that are specifically targeted or I have possibilities put it that way for public schools right now public schools really hasn't specifically said exactly this and that and the other is going to be done and sustainability measures not includes not only includes things like solar it includes things like improved envelopes of buildings so meaning more insulation that our ceiling it includes things like potentially geothermal so right now we're working together with the city jointly in this community-wide target but right now there's not anything specific yet as far as what would be done at what school there's some a broad table of identifying schools and what kind of measures would be taken with some dots but this is just preliminary and the public schools have said all along that any final decisions will be based on deeper public engagement and and more detail plans okay what if one more question I mean what about at least half of all the residents of Ann Arbor are either renters or they don't have rules that are amenable to putting panels on so is there any progress to its community solar options to provide residents or there are two packages of energy related legislation that have been introduced in the Michigan House co-sponsored by use of Robbie or yeah and one of those includes it's called the energy freedom package and one of those three bills directly addresses community solar and what enable community solar to be projects to be implemented in Michigan community solar for everybody that doesn't know is basically where an entity would put in a large solar array and I could buy 10 Sol or these men panels of that and get get the energy proof from those 10 out of the thousand or the 10,000 babka by 30 and could buy 5 etc etc or somebody even a school or a business could buy a large chunk of those that way you get much much lower costs and you get the economies of scale but that's not right allowed right now because the utilities have a monopoly supply position and it Frank it was just not simply allowed in Michigan right now okay let's see chair I don't think I'll say anything at this point and yet any further information from Council couple short updates at Tuesday night's meeting week the council approved the resolution to add two youth members to the environmental Commission so we will be going from a 13-member Commission to two new youth members up to 15 and the only change we made that there was a lot of discussion about whether ages fourteen to twenty five was the right age and we actually moved it up to age sixteen as the youngest yes sixteen to twenty five sixteen to twenty five after a lot of discussion and even some input from some high school kids as to whether they felt they'd be ready at 14 or whether 16 was better and they thought 16 inside so yeah so so that was approved and those folks will have a one-year term and I think that'll be coming really quite soon now that we can start recruiting them I'll wait to see how that unfolds but they'll they'll have to apply like a regular commission member and be reviewed and selected and the Energy Commission will be updating their bylaws next with a similar so we did that um our the food gatherers resolution that the environmental Commission had passed has gotten slowed down a bit in the attorney's office because there's some complicated issues related to the IRS and public charities and waiving their fee giving them a fee exemption so there they've been meeting with Aileen spring from food gathers they're gonna meet with her again on February 10 but then we expect after then after February 10 things will go more quickly and I will be on the way to incentivizing food recovery and waste diversion and so that one's got slowed down but it's still in progress and I could answer any questions from folks because so many things have been happening at Council but I did just want to let you all know that our issue of the 57 Oaks and and the other woodland trees out at 28:57 Packard it's not quite over yet they have submitted the trees aren't down yet they've submitted a signed development agreement but they have not submitted a permit to actually remove the trees yet so council gave them permission to move forward with the development because we couldn't prolong the lawsuit however council simultaneously as you may recall gave permission to pursue that Packard Road for affordable housing so they said yes and no both at the same night so Jennifer Hall did an analysis and unfortunately because that 28:57 down by cobblestone farms is not considered walkable by the low-income housing tax credit system it didn't score well for the Housing Commission to leverage it so so so Jennifer halls sadly had to give it a lukewarm to low response for affordable housing but I'm still working with Howard Lazarus and others and you if you have further suggestions to try to piece together sources of funding so there could be a Shannon give Randall a nose Jennifer Hall and and I won thanks Shannon if he was she was here tonight because she stepped in and tried to and successfully explained to Jennifer Hall how you could have a narrow driveway through the trees and then build the housing on the back of the light so we're working on piecing together a little bit of affordable housing and then other sources of funding such as we know cobble stone farms has overflowed and very successful so this being a a nearly adjacent property neighboring property could could be part of that system and then also the watershed melet's creek as the county commissioners pointed out is de MF for quality and so the part is concerning people is that we just don't know what the impact is if we remove eight acres of urban forests and woodland we don't know you know we don't know and so nobody wants to look back and say what were we thinking to take that down and take down those all those trees and of course all the wildlife and all the unknowns of what that is actually providing in the critical root zones and all and then so we're speaking piecing together sources of income one other source of course as we know is the six million accumulated and the Greenbelt funds for purchases within the city and another source of funding is potentially the Michigan Natural Resources trust fund and they've just updated their criteria to weigh natural resource conservation and urban area recreation so solid B so if we could so we're still working on all those pieces and mainly I wanted to let you all know that if you have any second thoughts or ideas that would help in this manner please let me know thank you I got a question for for an when are we gonna read the Ann Arbor news where you're on a hunger strike a hunger strike chained up in the in the trees you're not letting them cut them down are we gonna read that someday not be part you have to answer that some residents who are thinking that it's been done yeah okay so report from staff great so the biggest news not unsurprisingly is the a20 work we've been moving very very fast on that we've held over 30 events with our partner organizations and we have five in the next week alone we've had internal staff meetings with the fire department management team the safety unit clerk's office attorney's office and we're gonna also be talking with the IT department about how to get them involved in a 2-0 we have four technical advisory committees for each sector and they are currently meeting for the third time they actually have all met and are going through and prioritizing some ideas that came from the ideation phase for partners we've added common cycle and Arbor Main Street Association NRDC National Resources Defense Council Earth Sciences pesticide-free Ann Arbor and slow-food Huron other things we've been doing I know roughly like 50 55 or higher really impressive yeah we wrapped up the first public engagement survey and we shared some tack evaluations we launched a second public engagement survey which can be found on a 2-0 org and that focuses on gathering input on what potential actions the public supports as well as talking about funding mechanisms there's gonna be a really important town hall on February 22nd at Pioneer high school from 12:00 to 5:00 it's open to everybody and that's a really good time to come and see the actions that will be recommended and you'll get to put together your own Carbon Reduction budget and we created materials to help with engagement and there's a meeting in a box for residents to gather feedback in the fact sheets other things include the sustainability forums for this year are gonna be centered on a 2-0 not unsurprisingly I'm Thursday January 30th at 7 p.m.
at the downtown branch library we're going to talk about carbon achieving carbon neutrality in the energy sector and then monthly forums following that we'll cover carbon neutrality in the transportation sector resource sector and adaptation and resiliency sector that's my report all right thank you so let's see so the next item on the agenda is items for the next agenda in February so we've already heard about metrics discussion and it goals discussion in a performance review over the last year an accomplishments review an accomplishments review yeah so I call it performance review let's see is the staff have anything that would like to have discussed at the February meeting I think you and I've talked about stuff but I don't have it at the tip of my fingers yeah and another overreach I've I've talked to people at the Huron River watershed council and everything about getting an updated report on the health of the watershed and about different issues that are emerging such as microplastics and Huron River so they are actually just completing their a review update and it will be available by March so I'm thinking maybe we'll have water and air quality topic for the March yeah okay so we've got something to think about for the next couple of months in terms of action points this is something we've never done but I think just if John could remember to distribute that the metrics thing for people to review before a February meeting I think that would be a good thing are there any other suggestions for topics for the February meeting they're going forward okay so so the next scheduled meeting is February 27th you know 7 o'clock to 9 o'clock do I have a motion to adjourn sorry forgot about page two so this is the second public commentary period for the meeting anybody who wishes to speak come up to the microphone and just say your name my name is Eddie Smith I'm a resident of Ann Arbor and I want to start out by saying how much I really respect this commission and the mission you serve I think it's incredible and it's great to listen to the discussion and the debate I also want and I mean it's 9 p.m. and everyone's here away from their homes away from their families serving the public's interests I'm one of the most important topics which is environmental sustainability for the city that's phenomenal I also want to say I really respect high ethical standards and practices recusing oneself from voting on a matter where there's a conflict of interests between the public's interests and it's private interests is the right way we should be doing at Ann Arbor that's great it really is but I want to go further down that vein and offer a critique to this Commission if a matter is inappropriate to vote on it's certainly also inappropriate to discuss you shouldn't be debating it you shouldn't be commenting on it you shouldn't be recommending that the vote be postponed you shouldn't be saying the language is inappropriate you shouldn't be doing any of these things that happen here tonight because if it's inappropriate to cast a vote on that matter it's also inappropriate to influence the policy recommendation and any other matter it's just another mechanism of trying to affect policy and citizens of Ann Arbor have high ethical standards from our government they deserve it and I know this commission probably use it the same way so I think an issue is that the rules that are codified are incredibly gray on this matter they say that City Council and its appointed Commission's must recuse themselves from voting on issues that are conflict of interests but it doesn't explain what voting means all right there's no definition of voting is voting simply just casting your vote at the end or is it include discussing the topics recommending language changes all the things that happen here tonight between the second motion to consider the issue and the actual vote so I am again with the highest respect coming forward here and with positive intent and looking to the future but I would encourage all the members of the Commission to interpret voting with the highest ethical standard interpret voting meeting engaging in any way whatsoever on influencing policy including discussing it making recommendations debating anything like that and then I would encourage the chair of the Commission to interpret with the same way to rescind the floor from anyone who makes a mistake and to make sure that we are delivering the highest standards of ethics again so that's all I have to say thank you well thank you anybody else they must know the most important issues thank you thanks for being here Oh service or a motion to adjourn you
good morning big Hollow today is January 28 2020 it is the 97th a school this is WBZ news I'm Sydney I'm Adrienne today for lunch there OB not just supreme brown rice refried beans corn pears and milk tomorrow breakfast no the chocolate chip crumble yogurt peaches smoothie and milk we we don't have anyone celebrating birthdays today every monster is happy birthday he's got to the office to pick out your birthday by guinness yesterday's foods my question was in the trolls movie what is the name of the burden who has a crush on King Brennus stole the answer is Bridget the winner is gwyne to to be cheap go to the office coming to the office to pick out your prize nice ones that question is if you get five Starbucks each day how many will you have in ten days remember to write your answer neatly and include your name in class we have a special announcement are you looking for something to do this Friday after school you would not want to want to miss out on this Friday night out 3:32 by McLouth Claro these snacks King games and games hang out with your friends and teachers bring money for snacks bring here bring in your permission slips ASAP you do not want to miss out on this night of fun and games and now I'll observe a brief period of silence reflect on the anticipated activities of the day please stand for the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all hallo holiness is a big hollow pledge I pledge to be at the h-drive I pledge to be a pH guard for their I'm at school or travel farm whether it is school at rel apart I pledge to be safe in every way I should be safe in every way and take responsibility and work employment stability during the working leg I will be respectful and on I do I will be respectful and all I knew you'd be a terrible dancer and being star in the whole day through have a terrific Tuesday yeah remember to give people high five just we're getting out of them being a person is hard sometimes thanks for watching bye
good morning - hello today is January 29 he doesn't play it is the money they asked for this is WBZ news I am Maria I am Adrian today for lunch there will be pancakes and sausage stick cucumber hash brown wriggles and milk it's more for breakfast there will be fuel for you graham crackers or a child's orange juice and milk love anyone so amber fix it if you miss yours keeper plate please go to the Supreme Pontiff trip yesterday scoop a question was if you get 5 Starbucks each day honey and really happen 10 days the answer is 15 the where is Bowie 3 boyfriend come to office and pick up your prize today today's question is in the lego movie boys the name of the construction worker who is no active special remember to write your answer immediately and included in every class no special guest welcome dr.
good evening I would like to call to order the meeting for this evening January 27th 2020 and I just ask that you thank you so I usually have my feel that this is being recorded but I am here to let you know that as a pilot and if all works well moving forward we're live streaming right now so in that great you can you can actually watch live now with the volume down if you'd like right on the Dartmouth high school media YouTube channel pretty scary so with that said I just also asked if you are watching or even if you're not just to turn the volume down on your phones so to begin I guess roll call Kathleen Amaral yeah Chris Oliver your Shannon Jenkins here carol carol photos here John Nunes so we have allowed 10 minutes we're starting a few minutes early we are allowing ten minutes for public comment from anyone in the audience and I ask that if you do come up you speak on something that is listed on our agenda and just state your name if you so choose please don't be scared step on up good evening Renee Vieira Dartmouth educators association and on behalf of the DEA especially members of our bargaining units we would just like to thank the school committee for your support in recognizing the town Cross relative to health care and concerns that employees have and that we appreciate the dialogue that took place at the joint meeting with the select board in the Finance Committee special thanks to dr.
[Music] ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of States of America [Music] okay and then we'll move on to rule fall board member would read our board members career present board member cruise comes up here alrighty and at this point we have item three point four items from the floor public comment on agenda or non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board on non-agenda items no action can be taken oh I'm sorry I forgot to do the approval of the agenda so what will I apologized item 2.1 approval of the agenda with item 4.1 amended to be info slash action which means that if the board decides they want to have an action we can do it at the end of this meeting and if not it's just a street info item so it's just deciding how the board feels about that okay so three point one this is an opportunity for the public to address the board on non-agenda items I did I make a motion to move the agenda oh I'm sorry thank you laughs second all righty thank you actually discussion real quick so oh can you explain descent curiosity because it was listed as it was listed as an info item and we're saying we want to make it a post loss action can kidney Claire Foley [Music] thank you I received a question about why was it listed information and I explained that it was the thought had asked us to provide additional information at this meeting and that we did have the option to make it as info action which one to don't nobody want to continue it as an information item or if they want to make any decision do that but it is permissive it doesn't require anything yeah I guess my final you think you would be I want to be careful since it was listed as info if there are people who weren't expecting action to take place that were careful there so I understand that we may need to get consensus I might want to be careful about switching up actions and that you all can decide what you want to do [Music] you know hey let's do the vote [Music] and it passes 5-0 now we're moving on to 3.0 items from the floor public comment on agenda or non agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board on non-agenda items no action can be taken on non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board on any non agenda item prime took prior to dressing the board please fill out the request to speak public comment blue card and submit it to the board secretary and altogether six cards so our first speaker would be Andrew Alvarez [Music] hi good afternoon I'm a 23-year veteran hub school district middle school I was seeking subject credential in history and I was concerned to hear some of the options last time I mentioned that last Monday's middle school all together as possible I may have some of the details wrong if that's the case please bear with me on that my understanding is that the TK to date models similar to the Ellington model required multiple subject credential as a result many teachers single subject credentials currently at the middle schools would be competing for limited spots at the high schools in some rare cases high school teachers with multiple subject credential may be bumped down to an elementary school I don't know how many teachers in our district have either of those credentials but it seems to me that this model would be extremely disruptive to students and staff alive can in fact it could generate a great loss of experience middle school teachers if they do not have the credential to teach at the elementary levels there may be some less disruptive models such as departmentalized in seventh and eighth grade at these k-8 schools that allow most teachers to just transition laterally this would allow some more opportunities for electives that may not fit into a traditional elementary model another option may be to move sixth grade to the elementary schools which was discussed at length close one middle school keep the other two open 7th and 8th retaining most of the staff including the electives such as our extraordinary music programs that we have had would be other things I noticed also was the listing of avid as a possible cut I'm an avid coordinator at Foothill a strong supporter of the avid program I've been teaching for many many years most of the time that I've been there in fact the the program has been extremely successful servicing hundreds of students helping them to continue on to college I'm still in touch with many of these former students who were the first in their family to attend college and would likely not have attended but for Abbot some of these former students are even employed by a USD maybe we're in a position where that expenditure is justified anymore and leave that for you all to decide I don't envy the decisions that you have to make here but I do pray the decisions made will be made with the best interests of our students and our staff in mind I hope there will be an effort to retain as many of our experienced and dedicated faculty and staff as possible with a minimum disruption thank you for your time next we have mix of Allah good afternoon board members cabinet parents teachers community classifying I know that these decisions are rough I would like to ask you to look at the big picture look at the long-term picture as you're making these decisions I would like to request on behalf of the Association that you think about a plan a plan for the next five years what's going to happen next year may very well impact the following and so on and so forth based on the projections given to us by mark we could be reducing by 300 students each year if that's the case and we wind up with a high school of six or seven hundred students they're not going to be able to operate anywhere near what they're doing now and so what does that mean I know that you received information and input from different constituent groups and the thing that seems to be pushing to the forefront right now is a k-8 option of some sort I would really like you to look at all of those possibilities that are on that sheet and try to consider what's going to happen in the next five years do we need to really entertain the idea of a 712 with a seventh and eighth grade village so that what we can do is have ceramics for high schoolers and middle schoolers on the same campus imagine a ceramics teacher who could teach three periods of ceramics to high schoolers and then two to middle schoolers same with art same with music same with drama I guess what I'm asking is think long term I feel very strongly that we've been reactionary and how we've handled some of our decisions as of late in the last couple years and we need to be proactive and so I ask you as a board to be proactive and how you look at the information and make your final decisions we understand cuts need to be made we understand their need to be reductions and stuff we've decreased by almost half number of students in the last twenty years and we can't keep going at the same capacity we are now so as you're doing these as you're reviewing this information and making these hard decisions please look at it in the long run long term five-year plan six-year plan we can't make a decision based on just reacting to six and a half billion dollars of cuts this year that's not good enough we're better than that Amen sister you could be the board that decides to close a school and take all that money invest it in one of our high schools and becomes the shining castle on the hill where we have the most programs the best programs the most coveted school where everyone wants to get into you because of how you created a five-year plan that was gonna thrust us into the future please please consider that thank you [Applause] the next person is cherrymon hottest hottest - thank you good afternoon board members and cabinet I am Terry Montrose and I've been a teacher at Ellington school for 32 years I'm here for a couple of reasons today on behalf of Ellington teachers the first is to provide you with people who can answer questions regarding a TK to eighth grade model we've been living it for several years and if you have questions we're happy to answer them for you today my second reason for speaking is to openly congratulate dr.
biancalana good morning we are about halfway through the school year it's a good time to start thinking again about your goals that you said at the beginning of the year and hopefully have been thinking about as the year goes on the topic for this week is setting goals for yourself a goal is something you want to reach in football the players try to reach the goal line so they can score a touchdown in your life you should have goals that you want to reach your goal might be to get a higher grade in math or spelling or other subjects or to read one book a week or to be able to locate all the major countries not on a world map or to make friends with more of your classmates you can work toward goals that you want to reach soon or on some that will take a longer amount of time such as studying during school so you will go to a good college and have a great career studies show that when people write down their goals and think about them every day they usually are much more successful in life than people who don't write goals you will be much more successful and happy with yourself if you think about and write down the goals you want to attain take time and do this for yourself today and think about your goals every day next week starts the celebration of Black History Month throughout February we have a number of activities and assemblies offered to help you learn as much as you can about the contributions of African Americans in our world we look forward to celebrating and learning together thank you thanks and now we observe a great period of silence reflect created activities of the day I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I pledge to be a pH whether I'm at school or traveled far I plants to be safe in every way I pledge to be safe in every way take responsibility take responsibility during work and play I will be respectful and all I do I will be respectful and all I do and be a star the whole day through and be a star the whole day through thanks for watching
Jenkins for your support in trying to get you know folks in town to just be aware and also on behalf of our bargaining team we'd like to thank mr. Nunes for attending our last joint bargaining session it was nice to have a member in attendance and we thank dr. Gifford for the dialogue that went on that day and we're looking forward to continuing bargaining and getting some things settled so again thank you all thank you nobody okay keeping an eye on the time because we do have at 6:45 we will be closing our public meeting to go into like a public hearing for school choice but right now I would I guess entertain a motion to approve the regular and executive session minutes for January 13th 2020 madam chair make a motion we approve the regular session minutes of January 13th 2020 okay and I will entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes for that same date so moved madam chair with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is completed so moved second okay discussion favor I will abstain again one abstention okay we do have a new student representative if you would be so kind as introduced yourself my name is Brendan Rico I'm a senior at Dartmouth high school right now I am currently towards the end of my winter season of track and I'll be doing spring in addition to that I'm the president of the debate team and I'm on both National Honor Society and student council so oh thank you for being yeah so moving on to what's going on with students right now term to concluded on Thursday and semester to term three is officially starting as of last Friday so students into students who are enrolled in half your electives are now beginning the new coursework last Saturday January 25th 100 AP English students at for a mock exam with mr.
Norman on her new position she will truly be missed because of the significant impact that she has made at Ellington school for the last two and a half years our school has had administrative support that has made quite an impact on our students because of our two administrators they have had the time that they've needed to build relationships with our students to teach our students ways to handle situations for themselves to be stronger people and so my third reason for being here is to implore you to fill our assistant principal position for next year as you know as of Monday our administrators have been cut in half and we are left with one principal that's not good enough several years ago I personally fought for the position of an assistant principal because not one person can do it alone we need another admin yes we only have 471 students but we have 10 grade levels we have students from 4 years old to 14 years old the demands of those students are great and varied middle school students have very different needs when you're considering making th TK to 8th grade schools please consider the possibility of having two administrators I don't want you to set up those TK 8 schools for failure we're here to serve our students and we do that every day as best we can and to me this includes having appropriate adult support for students when needed thank you thank you our next speaker is Nolan Sinclair good evening my name is Nolan Sinclair and I have toffee it's Lawson middle school for 15 years I come to you tonight angry and disappointed that the school district is being reactive to the situation of declining enrollment that we as teachers have known for many years I understand the tough decisions must be made but the k-8 model will in all reality mean the end of after-school sports programs for the middle schools it will be too expensive to have all the a k-8 schools compete in after-school sports the after-school sports programs at the middle schools levels have already seen the effect of ka that has had on Ellington they struggled to get enough participants to field teams I can't imagine the issue of participation if all the schools were kicking by losing the after-school sports programs you would lose more students to other districts and this has already been shown through the years at the high school level I believe the 7th and 8th grade years are a transformative time in a student's life they learn how to navigate a larger social setting which helps them gain life skills and prepare them for high school PE teachers are an integral part of the 7th and 8th grade students development we form bonds with students that are different from classroom teachers they see us every day for multiple years they form bonds and trust us and that helps guide them through the challenging time in life it is my fear that we as B teachers will be eliminated at the k-8 models and that students would lose those connections ed code states that seventh and eighth grade students should get no less than 40 minutes of PE per day it is my understanding that at ellington this does not happen for many students PG is the only time they'll be active it'd be a disservice to the students if they are not receiving a quality PE experience each day lastly I don't understand why a USD is unwilling to have one high school by having one high school you'll bring the city together to rally around one common campus they can take pride in their city in school without being split into students who have played sports and other activities would be able to stay together and compete for one Azusa you would have more people staying in the district who knows maybe having one high school might decrease the violence in the city bringing everyone together and our kids knowing that they are not much different from each other I love this city and our students I just want what is best for them and the hawkers as many opportunities as possible thank you first of all let me apologize for not being able to speak more clearly but each other it's been a while since I've been here a lot of things disappointed me and that's why I stopped coming to the board meetings many of the actions by the board many of the recommendations by staff it's been very disappointing but this time you know what caught my eye is the but potential consolidation or closures of schools that I saw at their YouTube at all from the last meeting but more so I'm here to command board member Pena because after last meeting he brought up two very important issues to me one dealing with measure K monies the bond money that we the residents are paying for the ninety two million dollars that you developed a priority list of things that were going to be done with those 92 million dollars not the board when the Pena pointed out the expenditure over a billion dollars in a parking lot less than elementary school that wasn't contemplated there was not what we told the board Sousa was gonna happen with the money to build a parking lot for over and million dollars secondly board member Pena brought up the fact that it is the responsibility of this board of the district to let the boarders know that their night two million dollars are not being spent as originally promised to the borders this district this board has been very silent on how this monies have been being spent a lot of the priorities that were in that pyramid if you recall that was developed by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to consultants it's not being adhered to I would like I will come back to speak more on this issue at future meetings but for today I know there's not the other speakers talking about the consolidation and closures in school which I'll also we'll be addressing in the future Leslie Jones I currently have students at Ellington and at Gladstone High School I've been to three of the presentations of the fiscal solvency one in Spanish in English before the school board to makes any decisions on what they plan on doing I'm making k eights in the future I think you need parent input about the k-8 and hey you happen to have a parent here that has students in k-8 my daughter who's currently a senior at Gladstone high school was the first promoting class at Ellington I love Ellington and I love it staff I'm there often volunteering my time however my children miss out on a lot I'm not talking about rotating new classes they rotate between the two teachers and I love the middle school teachers they are fantastic I'm talking about that opportunities such as sports extracurricular activities music electives PE and so many other things I love the teachers at Ellington but whatever talents and skills they have is what they bring to the table and way of electives if a teacher has some knowledge on basketball then that is the elected that he or she teaches yes the students are able to rotate through electives but the quality of electives is lacking the students have electives twice a week for 30 minutes that's it one hour of electives the students I call that hardly any time at all my students have participated in the middle school after-school program to be blunt it stinks most of the teachers do not want to coach the teams because because of this they have to hire coaches who aren't invested in our students in my students sometimes the coaches have no clue what they're doing as a parent it kills me to see my children suffering PE they plead for an hour and a half every week that's it the PE coach well unfortunately he's been absent most of this year he comes once a week so we've had a substitute and we now have a long term stub and he does a great job with the kids but he's only there for an hour then on Thursdays they have 15 minutes and on Fridays it's maybe 20 to 30 minutes that's it so I wouldn't call it a PE program the music program I currently don't have any children in the music program my daughter currently a freshman at Gladstone went through the music program we have a substitute I wouldn't use babysitting it kills me to go into the cafeteria and to see him not interacting with the students not teaching music if you want to have a good school we need to administrators we fought hard to get our dynamic duo that's our numbers if you want to know what it's like please talk to the parents at Ellington good afternoon - my name is Laura bond Sundays first of all I'd like to thank you for your leadership and your courage to be able to face to address these issues that you know not only our district but many districts around us are facing so thank you because we know it's not easy I come to you as a member of the pack plus committee and also a parent leader in our community and we all know that we're gonna have to be making some very difficult decisions but as a parent and having discussed this with many many parents and discuss this thoroughly impact plus we've had to have some very heated discussions and it's never easy so I know that you all have to do this in many spaces so thank you but as a parent I'd like to stress that you know we value our teachers without your staff especially we value the people in our community who are connected and who understand the experiences that our students and our families are facing that live in a Sousa with that said I believe that as a parent and as a community member closing only one or two middle schools would create a hierarchy I believe and I with most parents that I have spoken to we would like for you all to consider having a k-8 model across the board this would eliminate divisions within our community this would not would eliminate the potential of having this hierarchy of having one better school than another it is my understanding that we would continue with the extracurricular activities that our students are now offered at the middle school but would be further supported we would have additional resources for parents for families for teachers for administrators I feel that this is will actually create an opportunity to strengthen our district and the partnerships that staff the board teachers and families have so I hope that really consider this again I'm not just speaking for myself I'm speaking for other parents we've had many many discussions and again although this is difficult I think to bring community and to really focus on what our families need I would like for you to consider a case right across the board additionally those savings with having a K through eight across the but you all have the data is significantly higher than just closing one or two middle schools so if we're having to face difficult situations so let's make one that is most effective and productive and yes we don't want to have this to drag on but we need to make those difficult choices thank you next up is Myra Rico good afternoon board my name is Myra Rico I have students at Sloss high school on Longfellow I am a highly involved parent at district and school-level I am a member of the pack class committee and was part of the group that made the recommendations that you are reviewing we as parents are very concerned that many deadlines are coming up if we are going to move on with these recommendations the uncertainty of the board is not allowing our staff and families to effectively plan for the coming years the choices your face are very difficult and as a parent I'm still grateful that you all are so accessible and are willing to meet we have met with all of you parents and and thank you for for taking the time on even during the break to listen to us and to meet with us we wish you didn't have to make these hard decisions but as you know low birth rates and with many families moving on to the Inland Empire and out-of-state because of financial stability it's only going to get harder you have been presented with these recommendations many times in public and closed sessions we hope that you make a choice soon so that we can all plan and talk to our kids about changes that are coming up so that you know they feel comfortable with with the changes good evening bombers and I want to consider myself as a very involved parent and a community as well as in our district we have made a lot of cuts but I don't think any of the tips have been into consideration we made a recommendation for one of the positions not to be filled but yet last week it was spilled we fill the position that all of the peppers members voted are not having it filled in yes we did I know that we are forced with a lot of organization in our district and I don't see it happening I see it in delayed over and over again I wish we could just do what we had to do and move forward with it also we also recommend it for trips for the board and yet I see that there's some coming up we would like to see less of those trips and have more trips for our children you know we have band we have orchestra and it's said that we can't fill the need to have those kids go to a trip for 50 kids but yes we send board members across the board for thousands of dollars it's not right not to it kids not to our community you know we don't mind healthy I don't mind helping my school's out um I adore our teachers here but you know being part of pack plus and recommending all of these things and they're not being considered it's very frustrating I feel like I have wasted my time impact bus all of this time because none of our recommendations have been taken into consideration oh thank you thanks [Applause] next up is crystal ma Liam yeah hello board I just wanted to finish my presentation from Tuesday since I ran out of time and we're having a very budget meeting so I give you the whole presentation so that you have it but it's folded to slide 7 cuz that's where I'm going to start remember last week I showed you that we have an average of 20 students per teacher and other districts that are comparable have an average of 23 students per teacher and there's generally not a decrease in test scores and districts having comparable student populations with more students per teacher slide 7 basically shows that from my understanding there hasn't been a large jump in PHA sizes at my school my site goes to Hajj a few classes have seen a jump of 7 to 9 students but some have seen a decline are a very minimal increase the next slide is slide 8 I looked up salary data on transparent California from the year 2017 by my estimations bringing our overall average student per classroom teacher ratio from what it currently is to 23 students the district has save about 5.2 million dollars that wouldn't solve all of our problems but I think that it merits consideration slide 9 is just a similar comparison of principals and administrators so you can look over like 10 is my estimation of a mid-range savings if we bring our principals administrators and teachers into line with averages from other districts I think that we could save about 6.3 million and I didn't look at any classified staff here on slide 11 or remember Cruz Gonzalez asked the district to show us what other districts do that have similar enrollment numbers thought that was a good idea so I looked into it using the data I had you can see there that all the other districts have less schools than we do I want to highlight Glendora that has only about 1,000 less than we do and they have eight side stores we have 15 I'm not including adult education in these because I don't know how those fit into the student population numbers slide 9 is just my conclusions I understand that we can't just let go of staff and teachers and we have special programs and certain teachers only teach certain subject we have certain certifications but I think we needs to need to look at a much larger reduction in staffing across districts certificated and classified staff and we need to look at closing some more additional schools along with that I think that schools will need not modifications to more comfortably fit all the students they have even right now at Hodge we could use a larger cafeteria a larger teacher parking lot and I would even say a vice principal and I see that I'm out of time so thank you very much thank you all right and up next is Gabe Miranda good evening everybody my name is Gabe Miranda I'm a fifth grade teacher at Dalton Elementary I've also been a resident here in the city of Azusa since 2003 I started off at Memorial Park in summer of 98 came from mezuzah Pacific University I also coach baseball at the University of Laverne for the past 20 years so I'm pretty invested in our city in our community and you know we're talking about things having to make cuts and student enrollment and such and one of the things I'd like to to start and help to have a conversation about is how to keep kids here in our community and over the past years I've been at the Little League just a little league alone and since my sport you know it's baseball I definitely see a number of kids and families not continuing to stay in our community because of athletics sports alone because of the quality of programs that we have and have to offer I remember growing up I went a bishop on high school and I remember Gladstone High School just being a monster you know everybody wanted to go to Glaceon high school and be on a rich ramicus team you know so when people talk about you know sports and programs in general and the quality of them and it bringing kids it's true it's a true conversation we're having the same conversation at the universal over never everybody's feeling the lack of students so they're having those conversations how can we keep kids how can we get students well it's through our quality of our programs and it's I'm bringing this because just this last year alone I coached the Little League all-star team which had about 13 kids on that team about three of the kids are gonna stay in the city of Azusa and play and that doesn't mean they're gonna even participate and all it really takes is for those other three is to have somebody say hey why don't we come over here and then they're gone just like that without a question because of the quality of the team a lot of the time it's not so much academics it's what do they have to offer me what's over there that that that's going to continue to enrich my child's experience in their lives forever because that's what programs do and it's not just baseball it's drama it's the arts it's theatre it's whatever somebody has a passion for so I sports in general and programs is something that I'd like to bring to the table and there's a lot of resources that we can tap into a lot of people that we can speak to and ask questions to the right questions how do we do it what do we need to do who do we need to talk to because it's not about dollars it really doesn't take money to bring somebody you know in a new field a new facility it really doesn't take that you know what it takes is the right people and to get the right people in the right place that takes some work and some effort and commitment so I'd like to just encourage you to start that conversation and I'm here along with many many others to support that conversation and our community thank you thank you everybody for sharing your concerns with us next is 4.0 study session point 4.1 Parent Advisory Council plus input for fiscal solvency so let us begin good evening for our last session there were some questions asked about what would happen with a reconfiguration to a k-8 model and so we tonight are presenting those items to you also in the packet was a sheet that we had shared previously we wanted to make sure everyone saw that all the options that were looked at and at the pack quest meeting that were that were shared and so that way any of those questions came up and we could answer those as well just as a reminder the reason why we are here today is because of how much dollars are coming into the district our decline in enrollment and the increase in cost such as our pension stirs and pers that at one time were paid by the state and now are being pushed on to organizations like school districts and cities and every other type of public agency hackfest was tasked with reducing by six point five million dollars in preparation for the next year and which is that top line that we shared with them first interim dollars at the governor's workshop they shared some lower numbers for Cola and lower numbers for some of the programs and that equals additional reductions that would be required and so if we only cut 6.5 million you can see the reductions that would be required in order for us to go back to A+ certification at second interim we would need to show an eight million dollar okay at least for both of these numbers and then the following numbers would be the required cuts in that in the out-years just as a reminder so this is the sheet that we looked at at pack class with all of the different configurations and some estimates as to the savings per year and some of the configurations that we looked at which is a k8 option over three years k over two years if we had a 712 model and a 612 model a reduction in the number of middle schools and then consolidating down to one comprehensive high school and then looked at different savings of savings one elementary to elementary and three elementary closures as a reminder we we brought to you kind of the top three inputs that were collected and those were ATK six and seven eight model so that way all of our Elementary's would become TK six we would have two additional schools that would convert into TK eight and then we would retain one intermediate site that would be a seven eight and then the next option was a TK eight at all of our elementary and no intermediate or middle school option and then last is a TK 8 option but we would phase it in over two years dr.
Higgins miss Fifield mr. Vardhan cariann miss lassi students and teachers will receive the results from a sin site and they'll use these results to target their efforts for the remainder of the school year approximately forty DHS students will be pursuing the seal of biliteracy by sitting for the APPL exam in April this is the first time DHS will be offering this opportunity for our students the most multicultural Club will be presenting a Chinese New Year celebration after school on Tuesday January 28th tomorrow at a nineteen the couple be making traditional Chinese cuisine as part of the celebration and it will be the year of the rat and finally next month students grades 9 through 11 will be participating in the course selection process for the 2021 school year you are welcome to stay but you you don't have to let's go down to the consent agenda that's listed at 7:20 there are several so we have requests for the Dartmouth high school percussion and dance team to attend the East Power regionals in New Jersey we have the varsity color guard request to attend the competition in Pennsylvania and March and color guard request permission to attend and compete in the indoor color guard World Championships in Dayton Ohio in April and the indoor percussion and dance team requests permission to attend the World Finals in Ohio again the end of April so should we take them all together anybody have anything any no I'll entertain a motion I make a motion that we approve these consent agendas for the beard to go to these different competitions I'll second that any discussion I just okay no just dr.
Mitchell good evening everyone so I had an opportunity to review some of the research literature on k-8 model strengths and some considerations and so the research that I reviewed peer reviewed research studies from the University of Michigan and Columbia Harvard education Northwest University of Louisiana Memphis also in the middle school Journal New York University the Journal of early adolescence and this lots of these studies had data from national longitudinal samples multi school and district data analyzing school achievement attendance school attachment and some social emotional factors as well these were rigorous peer reviewed studies using statistical analysis and in reviewing all of these studies there were three key findings that were consistent across the studies and I'd like to share those with you the first one is I go back to the other slide for me thank you the first one is increased student achievement for students who remain in a k-8 relative to students who transition in middle school the some of the research points show statistically significant results that suggest that students in schools with high percentages of minorities perform better especially in reading and mathematics when there's not a transition to middle school one of the studies that I reviewed included 442 schools with the control and a treatment group as well another point that came out in the literature is middle schools are more likely to have a negative view of their reading skills and also african-american students demonstrate large relative gains and math achievement prior to attending a middle school but then suffer larger drops both at and following transition to middle school another point that's a key finding across the studies delaying transition until ninth grade has positive effects for students socially and emotionally and what the literature found was that having numerous years in the same school improve student's sense of belonging community ownership of school and grades self-esteem and may count ur act negative influences in the community outside of school as well essentially the longer students extend the stability of remaining in one school the more likely they are to maintain connectedness and meaning maintaining positive teacher-student relationships as well the other finding across the research indicated that k12 or k-8 data indicate improved attendance patterns compared to students in a middle school environment which could be tied to many variables such as school connectedness one of the things that came across in all of the research was that the researchers recommended that policymakers really think about the strengths and the weaknesses of the k-8 model in middle school model and then really evaluate the evidence that best matches the district's students demographics another consideration that came up in the literature as well is that middle schools do typically offer more electives and so there needs to be very careful planning and consideration and how middle school electives are k-8 electives are our planned to that note I think we've heard tonight and I think we all agree that elective offerings if we were to go to a k-8 model would have to be reimagined and Riaan visioned you just can't do a middle school elective model in a k-8 setting so things like wheels things like turns are all things to consider but as was noted today death is maybe something that would be lacking some would say that the breath or more exposure is something beneficial as students get ready for high school and they start to consider their interest and the things that speak to them we also know that in a k-8 model as is an Ellington currently per the contract that we currently have teachers they're in sixth seventh and eighth grade also get what's called planning time currently planning time is PE and music specific but you know asking ourselves is that also an area to think about in terms of a broader course of study possibly we have had we have heard many recommendations and ideas in terms of possibly marketing in terms of like for instance Powell School of the Arts we do know that we have our Dual Immersion schools we have Project Lead the Way stem at Dalton and so maybe again rethinking in terms of electives and support teachers and plenty of time do we start matching up with that obviously there's a lot of different a lot of different ways in love a lot of different matters that this can happen but it is like Dana said something that that we would consider carefully as we as we move forward you know with whatever recommendation is a we land on good evening board cabinet and community I'm gonna take a little bit of time to talk about the staffing assignments and the implication on positions depending on the direction that the Board gives cabinet to move forward with regards to any reorganization or reductions there are considerations that will need to be taken into consideration as they apply to certificated employees these is driven by ED code so the ED code that is referenced in this regard is at code four for nine by five this process started far and we do this every year where we update our seniority list and it's a process that involves HR office communication with our certificated employees non management and management throughout the district where we verify the hire date and credentials and we asked for employees to provide us with any additional information that they have with regards to their credentials if we move into a need for a reduction of positions that information serves to be critical in making those decisions we always first look at seniority and that's why seniority is a predominant factor we look at the credentials and authorizations of the employees and a lesser known process is any specific training or experience that is required to meet the job requirements of a particular assignment what you have before you are is a timeline on that I essentially provides a overview of the process this is a timeline that districts used it's adapted from a research that I got through school services I added the boxes in red to really outline the timelines and dates that are critical for a Sousa Unified School District to move in in the direction of the reductions and meeting the March 15th deadline a lot of work is involved with this process so as you could see one of the first red boxes is June 21st which was last Tuesday and I'm sorry January 21st and we will need to move in a direction to have some direction so that we can make a decision and then I through through that decision the my office will go into an analysis of the direction that were given and then from there determine the positions that would be affected that would take us I I would present that to the board in closed session and then on February 18th we would need to provide a resolution for for this to take effect this would provide an opportunity for for me in my office to personally serve individuals that are affected there are instances when that personal serving does not happen because of timelines and it's it's it's just a traumatic period for employees so we want to be able to personalize this and make sure that we provide all the information and answer questions that the employee is due and that would we be able to do that by if we were to to be able to move forward on February 18th employees have a opportunity to request for a hearing and that will take place from the period of March through April and in an administrative law judge will determine whether or not the layoffs a decision is appropriate and if it is the Board of Education will make those final by May 15th if you move on to the next life I also have the classified layoff timeline that one this is also driven by Ed code and essentially it requires that we notify employees sixty days prior to the end of the school year so we always aim for that April 28th to be able to notify employees of the their position and whether or not it will be eliminated so some of the data that you had requested was around the space facilities and looking at what would be required for a k-8 conversion and depending on the size of the k-8 and some additional scope beyond the classrooms that I'll be talking about a few seconds would be to construct new multi-use spaces quads or meeting areas for students to to congregate in that would be separate than the elementary areas and then obviously the additional classrooms an estimate of the number of classrooms that we would need per year is is here and this would be just direct instruction spaces so this does not include any additional spaces for pullout or music programs or lab settings that the board may want to consider adding as well as the classroom spaces this gives us a timeline of how many how much we need to move so we we do need Direction relatively quickly or at least Hadj so that way we can have something right for next year listed here is an estimate or rough order of magnitude of how much classrooms cost and so we currently have a number of classrooms that we could relocate and so we can move those classrooms from the two sites that have already been closed and place them at one of the sites that needs additional classrooms and so that is that three hundred and forty-one thousand dollars per room to do that and that includes all of the construction the of the platform in which the buildings would have to go on and then any of the improvements needed to make it up to up to par with our standards so that would be kind of a a pre-owned building a new portable is for the bare-bones price of what a portable with would include this is the most generic level so any upgrades on top of that would be additional dollars and then a modular building is it looks more like a traditional classroom on the outside and very similar to what we have at Ellington currently and just as far as a range and so you can see there's a wide range and how much it would cost per classroom depending on what direction we wanted to go in and then on top of that just as I mentioned you might want to add a music building a lab setting for kids to have a pull-out environment and so that specialty room would range depending on what was in there from just over 700,000 or under 700,000 to 1.1 million depending on you know the specs of what was requested with that said the things that are not included in this are the unknowns such as when we bring this project to the division of the state art architect do they say we also need you to add a restroom do we also need you to work on ad a path of travel to get to these new classrooms and so all of that obviously would be additional dollars as far as cost when we looked at the total scope of the classrooms that we had on the previous slide what was that range it was in this four and a half million to ten and a half million dollar range for cost just for the classrooms not including any specialty rooms can we go can we please go back to the last slide cost affordable classrooms if I'm hearing correctly in order for us to if we were to go with the K T K through 8 model price for the classrooms that is it her school is it could you please elaborate on that yeah can you go back one more time so in order for us to move to a k-8 model all of our elementary in the last column in that 2223 those would be the additional classrooms that would be required given that is direct instruction classrooms we are going to probably also want some type of additional classrooms on top of that or pull that so it's 15 classrooms we're talking about and that is the four-point five to ten point three million that would be we would need correct know some things to consider is that if we went to a k-8 model that we would no longer do the modernization at Slauson or Center tonight 20 million dollars can you clarify because you said 15 classes but this is much more sheep it's more than its all this keep the sum of all of those numbers on the very far right hand corner which is okay so when it says so on Dalton when it says one it's not it's not one plus one no okay so because um led live in there so that means they don't need any classrooms or why is it just only those Elementary's correct so basically they have an classrooms to hold whatever will happen there direct instruction classrooms okay if you want to add additional rooms to like a valley deal that will be completely at capacity every single space will be used then that would be additional dollars and so you were stating that that money would come from I mean if we're looking at saving money and we're spending ten thousand ten million dollars where would that money come from because it sounds like that's very relieving so if you went if you move forward the only place that I would recommend it coming from would be the bond dollars that would be now and spent from Slauson and Center we we would not have general fund dollars to put ten million plus buildings so does that take the place the school bond money that was going to be used at center and Slauson and just pretty much if did over correct so there's approximately twenty million dollars that is allocated for modernization of those two sites and so it would take that 20 million use it for a different purpose which would be adding classrooms and and meeting spaces 88 compliance chimneys when you say that the total would range from four point three to four point four to ten point four million that's a wide range like what is that so the range is in what the district decides to do with what level of classroom so if we are picking up older epic old Sierra some of those modular buildings and portable buildings and we're moving those obviously that is at a savings in comparison to a brand-new Ellington level modular building or it could be something in the middle such as a new portable building that's plain so that scope would have to be defined and when it talks about 341 to relocate it's yours this is to relocate a modular building specifically or that's to relocate a modular or a portable and it there's a slight difference in price but for today's purposes with the induction yeah you save some if it's already on the raised platform so we already have buildings somewhere else that you couldn't relocate another starter every we have Mountain View and the old Sierra campus that have modular buildings and portable buildings that we could move in time you know we will also have rooms if this was a cave so I do have some questions but I'd rather focus on the programmatic impact all right some and and I'll start with I guess in terms of when you think of K eights we heard one of the teachers speak about the difference between having a department focused k-8 versus what does it call multi sub or what would you call it when most so are there Cades that exist that have like a department type set up at the meta in their seventh and eighth grade is that is that an approach that that work I mean do people use that approach the its more common instead of having a single set of department like English and then a history department to do combination things where a person teaches English in history or math and science which interestingly enough was actually the initial design of middle schools and middle schools became popular like in about the 70s was actually to set him up as schools where a student would stay with the teacher for two periods so that there was a certain level of flexibility but also integration of the subject and content math and science the intention was to for example help kids understand the northern math and other science but see how they're connected and also have a chance to be with a teacher in longer period of time who would know them better and could work with them and move them forward so that was the original design of middle schools um I mean historically we didn't have middle schools we had junior high schools which were only seven eighth grade and then when the the the idea of middle schools came about was to bring in sixth grade students but recognizing that it might be hard for for the sixth graders to do transition right away into a typical Department structure and and recognizing their age also in need for more social emotional support the original plan for middle schools was to do that kind of shared work with fewer if you were just and more opportunities for teachers and to know their kids whales have fewer different kids that they see and kids to be able to see the connections across their subjects yes there - without it can it be doable I mean can it be doable okay can we have those programs is the question you're saying it's it's small but is it feasible can we do it so you would not be able to have every elementary sight or even a number of elementary sites that would be in this model having the two blocks I'm so so sort of the option one would be probably the most doable which was that seven eight intermediate if you were going to do something like that my next question is around about we'll start off with physical education right so I mean I think what what would be the plan in terms of physical education if we went to if we went to a k2 positive minutes for PE are the required minutes from an elementary model that's 200 minutes every two weeks that is a combination of the planning time PE teacher and the regular classroom teachers is there a possibility you're saying it's 200 minutes for every two weeks yes that is correct is that what they're receiving right now because of what was just shared was that they're receiving only 30 minutes and possibly 20-30 minutes on the Thursday in 20 minutes so that's so it's 120 in two weeks so could we going along the lines for with physical education and we want to go ahead and continue the Wellness and the physical activity for our students could there be a you know program put in place for these students to receive the 200 minutes so verified by every student at the elementary level must be sent in 200 minutes every two weeks right so so what I'm looking at though is a six through eight grades and and by moving them to 280k through eighth grade model maintaining some of that you know some of that similarities in the sense of okay they're they're not in middle school but some of the similarities that they would receive in middle school as an example like bump it up to four hundred minutes so so just remind us how many minutes do they get right now and I kick in a set and another 400 minutes so every day okay so our students at Ellington are getting half the P minutes that list and then of those half is minutes so 180 of those minutes or half of those minute you said how many per week two hundred per week Venus every two weeks right so they're getting a hundred and eighty with the physical education teacher is that what you said they get it how much do they get with it with a schoolteacher I believe is in 1900 a week or every two weeks every two weeks so we're saying that a hundred and ten of those minutes are being provided by the by the by their classroom teacher that is correct so my might and then my questions my original question is so what is our plan if we're going to go to Kate so are you telling me the plan is to to take what we're doing at Ellington and do that across the district right now the conversation has been if we go take tt8 it's an elementary model which then kicks in that 200 player two weeks requirement again when the if the 6th 7th and 8th grade teachers what also be would also have the blending tone and so this is again when if we wanted to we can reconsider how that planning time or what that planning time is that that's one area but we can definitely explore and you can definitely think about as an area where we can think about again is it a bad course of study is it is it something specific is it PE those are things that can be that can be considered depending on where we land so one thing that I would would like us to I mean to look at it I hear that there's you know state minimums and we're saying that that we comply by those state minimums but if we take the question outside of state minimums and ask ourselves what is what is most beneficial for for our students of that of that age range and what is what does research have to say so I understand it there to you know to minimums based on the models I mean I would imagine 400 minutes has you know greater benefits what did what does research say about that sure right now the state of California right even if we look at the dashboard is becoming a hot topic is broad course of studies that is something that is you know a little gem that students should have a broad course of studies correctly that's an hour one of the indicators that we do talk about in the outcome so I think those are things to consider right if you put more of this does it being less than this or does it mean add and so again I think this is opportunity to to really think about as we think about this concept of that course of studies so that our students are having exposure to a wide variety of extracurricular or electives you know the type of things schoolteachers and administration to it were considered considering this option to to get input the superintendent and cabinet have been out for two pens is down and not to say that this is you know sufficient but we have been doing road shows to get announcer questions and a lot of ideas have come out of those suggestions for example you heard today the one high school that was one of the communities where staffers were saying you only need to consider this as an option so different different things have been coming out of those q and A's as different cabinet members go to two school sites but that has been the extent of that I think I understand what's happening Ellington is not ideal I think if anybody had a child in middle school that's not what you'd want to have their child but I also I find I kind of feel like the trade-off was that this is a unique a unique it was a unique up it was unique circumstance because we only had one k-8 school so I am just going to say that if we are contemplating going k-8 district-wide we have to be more thoughtful about how do we make sure that kids have access to physical education and how do we rethink how we deliver physical education so that they can get it every day and they can get a reasonable amount we look at the obesity rates across the state we look at them within our own district and I and I will I mean this that to me that's just one example of how we need to be very thoughtful about how we go to K if we're going to do it and have really have a plan about rethinking so that kids can have those access so that was okay so that's me for me now in terms of you keep on talking about a broader course let's talk about music first right so in terms of music what would be the planet we went to k-8 to delivering music to those students that's all the music at a middle school [Music] so in 4th grade students have the opportunity so they have PE for 45 minutes and then they have general music which is a choral music and fourth grade for 45 minutes in fifth grade they have their 45 minutes a week then they have the choice of 45 minutes for either band or they can go to choir week they also have one more if they choose band a one more pull out session a week which is 45 minutes that's also at Ellington as well that's worth it I'm sorry that's there so then what would happen with 6th 7th and 8th so is it too interest and desire screams where that becomes the focus of electives and operates so if I want to make sure I understand this correctly we're saying that at a middle school level currently you're saying that the students have the option but the broad you know menu of choices but they select one but they have exposure to that elective every single day if we were to move the way that it's proposed with the savings that are in place here if we were moved to move to a K to 8 the amount of time that they have in that and that elective would be cut in half and split with PE so P is not more to come and elected as well no PE is a mandate well correct but it would operate in the same way that an elective operates how PE and music alternate so there would be 200 minutes of PE to hundreds of this milk right that is just a planning time that is where a level I bring this James spoke a little bit about the whip to be a doctor as well so on top of the planning time there is also simon electives it was twice a week yes twice a night on top of on top of the planning time that we currently need for teachers I guess here's why is because if we're looking at it from a perspective study understand if I'm a seventh grader in a music [Music] basically exposure versus depth okay I really wanted to talk about if we can go to this though the staffing assignments so let me was my question so for example going going to ATK eighth-grade model middle school teachers that are single subject credential what happens to them yes so the first step in this process would be to identify the program that would be cut and if we were to walk down the path to explore this sixth grade 6 grade position or sixth grade going to the Elementary's then we would need to analyze to see which positions would be affected and we would be looking at the credentials of the employees and then from there we would need to broaden the scope to see if the employees who currently are in middle school would single-subject credentials have more seniority most seniority then others in the middle school and secondary in high school so it is conceivable that even if they have the decision to remove six play from middle school is conceivable that a high school teacher may be the positions that is eliminated so if I'm understanding correctly so what you're telling me is that a sixth grade teacher that has a single credential subject right and has more seniority would be looking to a high school that is a possibility and how about the the staff that has the single subject that is in the middle school so go back to the if the decision is to those positions are six positions to the elementary we will look at the positions that would be affected the credentials and if they have a multiple subject credential they could conceivably go to the elementary positions that would then be created by this movement to sixth grade at the elementary this training and experience to meet the job requirements of specialized positions that you guys have shared with the state could you please elaborate on that a teacher's lawyer they can receive specialized training that goes above and beyond with the branch or authorization may may require they may have attended a specialized training for it's a math and attended at receive additional courses did not result necessarily in a additional credential it is additional courses that will then be taken into consideration the encode is very clear that a senior person I'm super person with more seniority more senior teacher needs to be able to do the job but the junior employee is doing so in fact position that they're teaching that say a class that is very technical and that the district invested money or they employ on their own volition received additional training that whoever is more senior would need to be able to go into that position and in that position from from from the beginning without the additional training until the end code refers to this process as skipping I'm licking it I'm going to the different models just so I'm not jumping around on you and getting you confused so we have the three-year model in the two-year bottle with the junior High's going there if we have the three years if that becomes the choice does that give us those two extra years they will just move it keep 6th grade there and then when we develop how many hours we're working around with PE and how we're working with electives we can still work on that during that year as we progress to seventh grade then that gives us that year to develop all of that and then the third year will give us time to hone everything together to the final model so it's gonna be a progressive as I see it correct and that's an excellent point for a variety of reasons I could speak to the progressive nature of the three-year model from the perspective of staffing because I know there are our team members our teachers who only have a single subject credential so we are in cabinet exploring an option wherein we could help a single subject employee a multiple subject authorization so that they could stay with their sixth grade students or their seventh grade students as the progressive model moves forward and just as a point of just to share with you what is required to get that multiple subject authorization a single subject credential holder would have to pass the cset Rika and also take a methods course in order to obtain a multiple subject credential specific to the area the level that that's required for multiple subjects looking at the options you guys gave us and school closure options you know one of them being one a high school option to be closed say we did go down that route well what would happen what is the Patek what is that like oh look one of the things that we've been looking at is no question of what somebody brought up earlier today is the really what what is the long-range plan and what's doable now what do we have a space to do and what do we not have a space to do and right now we do not have the space to actually collapse both high schools into one high school we don't have enough classrooms to do that so the only one to address that would be extensive building two to accommodate that whitter what and what is the population number and if there's a high end at Gladstone dude can you get that to us please I have it right here so currently as of today the sense of high school has 1090 for students has 1090 for students Gladstone high school has 1000 51 students and Sam has 197 students so in order to let's say we wanted to combine the next year you have 2100 students at one high school right now that would be almost impossible to do we don't have enough time to build new classrooms or to probably and debris and portables that quickly but over the years as as we continue to declare enrollment they can't get to the point where we could do that it's probably not for a number of years however and what you may still have to find ourselves in situation where we have one larger school one comprehensive high school and then one smaller kind of specialty school maybe it's a magnet school or has special programs that people are interested in the comprehensive school is the one that has all the electives it has all the sports and a specialized school we have a particular focus that some districts have done though because Evan Evan and five years out would have about 1,700 or 1,800 kids in high school which might be hard to accommodate in either Gladstone or Azusa so at least for the foreseeable future that is not yet available unless we invest significant funds into cutting the spaces to make that happen we have right here in front of us and the one high school option is something from what I'm understanding or how I'm saying it is something that we're gonna need time to work on anyway so we wouldn't if we just let that to the side for right now and went ahead and did what we're doing you know figuring out consolidating schools or what we're going to do and then after that's done look at how we are and we notice you can definitely keep that in mind and as our enrollment changes it becomes more and more doable okay okay so something that I would want to be careful though about that is I think that there are I do see some potential first steps I mean that we could look at for example I think that with some of the different options that we see there is a common kind of denominator of of a k-6 I see that happening you know with a lot of different models models that are there and so I could foresee that happening as an initial step I however I'm very uncomfortable just taking taking a next step and then just saying and then next year let's let's see and then a year after that let's see as opposed to saying okay we're gonna take an initial step because this is step one here and now from this point within the within the I mean the next few months I mean I I think that they're neat we need to then develop a comprehensive plan that spells out okay three years this is what it looks like and in five years with projections this is what it would look like if there was a consolidated high school or if there wasn't an academy as we talked about it but there needs to be a cohesive plan because again I think I mentioned this at our last meeting the concern that I have is we went through this as a community less last year and the conversation that we had last year is is completely separate and disjointed from the conversation that we're having this year and and and I and I want to avoid us having disjointed conversations year after year and so what I'm hearing you say is what I'm hearing I'm sorry I think that certainly it is reasonable and it is unfortunate that we're a different situation in terms of funding enrollment than we were two or three years ago when we started thinking about closing elementary schools one of the questions we looked at is could we close some more elementary schools that was one of the options that was considered and right now we have 10 and we have a number of schools so some can accommodate up to about 500 kids some can accommodate about 400 kids and then some are 300 student campuses given the expected loss of students say at the elementary level we can project out that let's see we need 10 next one we're going to need 10 campuses the year after that we'll need 10 campuses here after that we can go to 9 here after that 9 that's to a 324 and in the year 24 25 we could accommodate our students our elementary students projected either about the same rate of losses we had this year in eight campuses so we can we can move down as the declines over a five-year plan so that for the foreseeable future of the next two years we probably need to say it and not at ten there's one called a lot to that Ellen Longfellow has very very few TK students and so we could we could actually want our kids and absorb them into another school however because it's our preschool site almost all the staffing would have to stay so it's more of a question do we want them on regular you know TK campus or do we want them on that what was turning into a preschool campus but other than that against nine schools smaller but initially there's not a lot of cost savings with that but probably loose maybe one or two positions because it's such a small number but our challenge rate is immediately is that we might have no sites that can don't have the meta sites to accommodate 500 kids per site might have that 400 kids per site it'll be about four years before we can do that the best option is to look at sites that can accommodate at least 300 and that's an average because so many more and some will be less and that's where we can start making some changes sooner rather than later what I'm getting from you is that basically along with this ya know you see the need for the k-6 but along with that as we're moving forward we need to put together a five-year plan or a plan a consolidated plan where we this is what we're gonna do and depending upon how things go just a plan in case so maybe even to be more specific can you can you go to the slide that shows the the staffing timeline so if we look at this this is for certificated there's another one that we have for classified what I'm saying is we look at the the January 21st box and we're already we are already beyond that there there's a there's a reality so there may be some some initial steps that we can look at taking here now but I personally would be uncomfortable signing off on a long term you know direction unless we had a long term plan one of the things that I wanted just to point out Glendora has two thousand five hundred and ninety thousand kids in one high school which is which is exactly the same model as the Sousa high so it and you're seeing that we right now have 2100 kids if we were to combine a Souza and Gladstone so I would like to go ahead and have some research done on how we can't have that happen because we're we're losing our kids it is is it at you know like it middle school and then glad you know right at the high school they're they're gone because of athletics to other school districts we we have to take into perspective the reality that we are losing kids we have to take into perspective that we have less families having kids this is real that this is a decision these are decisions that we can't take lightly that I do agree we have to you know think about ten years five years ten years what does it look like last year when we're closing two schools I suggested can we look at three four and that's not what the plan was but it you know we need to start thinking outside our box when you start thinking of the possibilities of how this is we the projection is next year we're gonna lose another 400 that's another school so you know we have the teak heat tk8 model the two years it's gonna save us more money in the long run we you know closing one high schools an options gonna save us three hundred thousand yes we may lose some kids but guess what we can have strong team we can have strong school spirit we close three elementary schools we're looking at about five million we close them you know we start looking at programs that are not that are not at high capacity filled with our students I mean these are real real conversations we need to have and we need to go out there and really do the research and I it's not a hearsay like oh just because one teacher told me or one administrators said this is really good and their and their school know what is actually happening what did the numbers say right now as I'm looking at Glendora it's two thousand five hundred nine thousand kids in one high school they're a strong high school we may have our students over there so I I mean these are the conversations we need to keep having and I know that someone said you guys are delaying this but guess what this is not something that we can take lightly as eyes as a district as a school board as administration is looking for what their recommendations to us they also have to go and do the research so we're not taking it lightly they're not taking it lightly and it's not that we want to delay it's not that we want to put every you know everybody's on edge or it's not anything like that I think we're all in this together we're united we have to come into partnership in the sense that we have to do what is right and what is right maybe not right for everyone but what is right for the future of this district for our students that's what we need to look at all this you guys coming I truly appreciate all of your words because there's a lot of stuff we don't know if you don't tell us our staff aren't in our cabinet here too you know there's a lot of stuff that they share with us that we don't know the more we know the more informs that we become the better that we can make a decision moving forward and looking at it in the long run not just you know we can't make a decision now and I'm sorry I'm going to compare it to something else like a decision that was made and then ten years fifteen years later say whoops wrong decision which we may I'm not gonna hide we may say that but we really have to sit here and have adult conversations and we cannot honestly cannot take this personally because the outcome is going to affect each one of us whether we like it whether we don't and we all have to hope this is when we unite this when we come together and do what's best and I'd kind of like to tag on to that it's just something that I've shared with people before is basically we're here to listen to you so that you can tell us what you want and and how you feel because we feel that until you feel listened to you won't listen to us and so please come bring us information so that we all can work together with this because this is gonna be hard it's gonna be a booger so I just want to say something I completely agree with Adrienne in terms of let's let's let's do some long-term planning and I think that I appreciate that the fact that we've been able to sort of kind of guess how many students will be in our district because of birth rates right but I do think if we're going to do this we're going to move I mean we're just guessing in terms of oh we're going to end up around 6,000 students as a district we don't really know that and so and I know it's an ad it's an added expense but I really think that it's important to hire a demographer who can take into account economics looking at our population the aging population to give us a good sense in the long term what our student population it obviously it's an estimate but a long-term estimate of what that's not going to be like so that we can make these decisions and take the time to make them understanding really what kind of context we're looking at in removing some of the comments correctly maybe one of the things we want to think about then is splitting the decision there's a step maybe that we can take this year and then have time to for example content continue to work and see you saw some of the questions that have been raised here and since all of the options right now under the priority recommendations all involved sixth graders staying at their elementary school that might be something that is a start for us so that we can continue we'd have the time to hire demographer would have the time to to get more input on the electives and and structure how that could work as well as the other advantage is you would actually if we ever got to the point where you thought that we should go to k-8 so it would give teachers more time to if they wanted to get an extra authorization they'd have the time to do that if they so choose and along with that just to throw something else because we were talking about having a diet demographer before can we combine those two studies and save money the other one would be for okay thanks for asking I I think you're well that's that's my my view as well that you know starting with sixth grade you knowing that that's going to happen and not rush into something that's gonna be a snowball effect and that is gonna end up in what that we won't know so so can just explain one thing right right when you look at the the costs if you go to that slide that has the different options but are those are the savings in the first year correct so then why is there if they all require one grade being moved to the sixth grade why why is there such a difference between the first option and the bottom two so the assumption there was that we would be keeping a majority of the administrative costs that are associated with the middle school in that first option being that we would be creating in year one the proposal was one middles but you I'm not understanding so you would do you would do everything in one year is what you're saying in this proposal we would move everyone to a tk6 at the elementary level you would move and this is just one idea we could do different iterations of this but everyone will move to a tk6 the middle schools would be centralized into one single middle school and then in the next couple of years would be the formation of the other thing that's not on there is kind of the long-term cost saving so option one is that $850,000 for year one the other two options though have a year two in a year three savings in mark could you go over that with us please sure I know that the last year was four million dollars on the full rollout of year three the last one you saw that four million dollar savings after year so basically it would just be the time that the dear that the savings would be in effect totally fully you know so basically we did three years we wouldn't get that extra savings for that last year but then we would give our people chance to adjust to things correct and then okay in in the 2-year rollout you would have some additional cost of adding classrooms to the high school if that's where you interim housed the eighth grade class so you would have to include that and depending on where you funded it from probably the bond then that cost would go there and it wouldn't be a great expenditure because it's temporary right and if it was from the general fund then you would have to subtract it from whatever savings that you would ultimately so requires correct we've had two administrators up until just recently what dr.
Gifford have any reservations oh absolutely not okay thank you so I went back more trophies I have no reservations about this but I'm gonna start doing this kinda after I just wrote a big check for Decca I think this is great I know the band does a lot of fundraising but I do want to point out that a lot of the stuff that our band does is paid for it's supported by the schools but it's also supported by the hard work of the Music Association who raises a lot of money and also the parents and the children who are going to these events who do have to pay a considerable amount of money to attend these things and I think it's important for us to continue to highlight these things that might normally come out of taxpayer dollars but that we are asking volunteers and families to pay for these costs know so at 6:39 let's see what can we take well there is something another five or six minutes I thought I read in the paper 6:30 it was advertised as 6:45 okay yeah alright and yeah I'm the standard times on the 17th which engine the pie saw it and I thought it was six I apologize okay no problem now it's 6:05 yeah why don't we yeah that would that's what I'm looking at - so you'll see in your packet that the South Coast educational collaborative is in need of our vote or a seeking our vote on a membership request from New Bedford public school district and Westport school district so you know the language has been provided in our packet and so when new new districts come on board they have to redo same process we underwent and yeah it was about a year that it took us to you know get on and I've just started attending meetings and the board meetings but it goes through each school committee each of the towns the membership towns and then to the commissioner etc etc so this is one of the steps in the process yeah so I'll entertain a motion that we we edit our you know this for the collaborative to read it I'll move I'll move that the New Bedford School District join the South Coast educational collaborative as a member with full benefits privileges and responsibilities jump to the terms and conditions of the collaborative agreement approval by the Department of Education and subject applicable Commonwealth rules and regulations I further move that the chairman of the school committee is authorized on behalf of the committee to execute all appropriate documentation to consummate the committee's decision I further move the superintendent of schools as appointed as a district representative on the collaborative board okay I'll second that any further discussion so I'd like to make a motion I move that the West Park School District join the South Coast educational collaborative as a member with full benefits privileges and responsibilities and subject to the terms and conditions of the collaborative agreement approval by the top approval by the Department of Education and subject to applicable Commonwealth rules and regulations I further move that the chair of this school committee is authorized on behalf of the committee to execute all appropriate documentation consummate the committee's decision I further moved that the Superintendent of Schools is appointed as the district representative on the collaborative board I second that throughout the discussion I'll just ask dr.
Krim see one of the things that I thought I heard you say was that our school size can't handle wouldn't able to have a 500 you know a population if I'm gonna eat sure she right now is about right now when we look at the projections three years out is that what the average would then be or what would what would we anticipate that to be according to this the slide that has the additional classrooms that would end up marrying a little bit from where they started so for example uh mark do you call or give an example of one of the schools to show them so actually in year four many of the sites just because enrollment is declining so quickly many of the sites would be just slightly over what they are today it's really in year five well you could start really consolidating schools being just the small number of kids and then another piece I know that when we look at can you go to the model that has the that has a three different models the slider has a thirty four models of of options so when we look at at this slide this is this is talking about our you know our bottom line budget which which I understand another thing to keep in mind also is with our with bonds and with modernization as well when we're looking at long-term planning as well it's a it is much more effective to maintain a smaller number of schools than it would be to maintain a larger number of those schools and that's not but is it just because it's not necessarily reflected or it does it doesn't say on one category we saved here or we don't save as much in this in this area but as far as you know bond dollars and even potential future bond dollars that are spent to maintain that's that isn't exactly what worries me along those line is that we just approved turf to go into Gladstone high school we just approved you know we're approving all these things for facilities but yet we're looking at cuts in the long term run right so for example being able to combine one of the high schools I mean these are decisions that we do have to you know speak about and talk about but and also decide but have a plan and be able to okay this year you know we need to do this and you said near four right we would have some space maybe combined and close those three schools that you guys are an elementary schools that you guys are suggesting you had said that we can function with ten schools we're at 15 schools there are surrounding communities if for example we closed all three middle schools we already close to elementary and three more than we would be down to ten schools plus you could close Longfellow to the challenge with the high school as much as you know it sounds great to have to only modernize one is that the data that was presented earlier does show that we could say $300,000 if we don't lose any students if we lose even 30 students then we don't save anything and if we would lose more we would run the risk of being in the hole and that's that is what is the risk that we'd have to we'd have to run the risk of knowing if the students in class in high school maybe end up going to Covina unifying the north north they are heard of the north no I'm just saying well maybe you'll get double them going there I mean if you go all the way across the town they're not that close to each other neither closer it is fine but they're totally into different areas so we would probably lose more students that's really it's a risk that we have to factor into all of this mmm but we can go ahead and look at that after we've done what we've done what we're planning on doing it discussing now right you could continue looking into that and getting a plan done first yeah so how does everybody feel about the I mean from what I'm hearing possibly just giving direction for a k-6 but that's up to you all y'all what do you feel I would like them to bring back the K 86 model in the savings I like to take a look at that I think it's important that we do look at that also savings for the first year of going k-6 are up there you know it's the 1500 or the 1.5 mark correct yeah because that's the first year savings so as you will say the current fifth graders would stay at the elementary school that first year that the estimate is that it would save 1.5 million so where does Kane k2 and then okay so this is TK two six mostly how many schools are you're talking about because then you're talking about TK 2 eighth so the eight would be over three years the first year would be somewhere in the middle if you don't make a decision but many of the positions we can we can make we can move forward on knowing which way to go it's just hard to read read it the way it's written so here this would be over three years so the first year of the plan would be that next year all the fifth graders remain on their campus and they stay there first sixth grade at our middle schools all three of them would become seven eight and that would be the 1.5 so how does that save money so the level of staffing that's required at our middle school would be much less in that model and so the support staff is required to run a middle school it would be would be less the sixth grade going back to elementary would just be the teacher positions correct okay so how do you feel or I'm sorry board member our yeah that's I think I've already said how I felt there's no easy way around this you know we can sit here and say well yes our our Gladstone high school students that live closer to Covino will lose them I mean the reality of it is that we're already losing them it's going to be far for some but guess what if we offer at one school the the programs that are strong the athletics that are strong they will come just like just like they go to Glendora to Covina to South Hills to Pasadena to Alhambra even to almani so like I said bringing the strong programs to one high school right now if you look at um the ECP program the early college program how many students is serving how many students graduate from that program I get it there's a there's a lot of things happening at glasses that are great there's a lot of things happening in the shoes that are great but again that you know we have to look at the long run these are decisions that everyone is talking about that you know they've considered they haven't considered we need to unite and be strong divided with with two schools oh and I'm looking at the high school again I'm taking myself removing myself personally from all of this and thinking of this as a business being able to look in five years of 10 years being fiscally responsible I know that there's jobs in the line this this is not taken lightly I know that we'll probably lose some kids yes because if we close one high school or close three middle schools and we close three other schools if we make those hard decisions and be able to work on it plan each year to execute those and we stop wasting our measure K money on things that are not gonna be sustainable we purchased you know we purchase things and then all of a sudden we're closing things and then we're like wait wait now we're doing this it's it's kind of we're all over the place and we're not headed and the objective the objective and the plan that we you know looking at the whole picture okay this year we're gonna do this but yet we you know each year we're going to do something so we do need to make a tough decision and I need to stop no no you don't go ahead I'm just saying that we have a time little you know so I want to go ahead and send me if you can I think I've said my piece and all right yeah I mean I'm there was a little I wish we had a little more information so the we the where we are it feels it feels you know to it to an extent up against the okay you know up against the wall or up against a ledge or I mean that's kind of the feeling and I realized that there are some timelines that we that we have that we need to address but more information that's needed to make you know a decision I suppose I could for again and I think I said it earlier I could foresee moving in an initial step of retaining sixth grade at elementary schools only on the condition on the basis that we that we set a timeline for a comprehensive plan that extends beyond number of years so not that we make a decision and then say we'll figure out the plan or well figure out when we will figure out the plan but together say let's retain six but then say by June by September you know whatever is that we that we have spent the time to whether it's we need a demographer to do a study or whether we need to look at that ourselves whatever that looks like we need to have that plan and how about have a timeline on when that plan would be finished awesome board member okay some figures on that also so have we given you enough direction to do what you need to do or do we need to would you all like to vote I'm just doing case six because that is an option anymore nicely into figures all right somes all right why I thought I mean I thought I heard all of us say they were comfortable going to k-6 we didn't hear that for this next year coming up I know I know you didn't you said you wanted more you said you wanted more information on that so I mean it would be great you know we look at this at the graph and so we look at option number one how it has TK 60 K you know middle school seven eight but this is all in one year and so and so if so the but I guess I'm saying this in retrospect now at this point if it was laid out in a way that compared apples to apples would be helpful but even as we look at some of these options and really many of the different options that we have here on the sheet all include moving to a to a TK 6 exactly and so since that's since that's a case I'm saying I I would be comfortable moving forward with retaining sixth grade this next year at elementary school sites only if at the same time now we also identify a timeline when we would have a a comprehensive plan in place can we go ahead and do this all right that's touch I just wanted to make sure that you have the ability to yeah I mean I'm okay with that I also think back to to my previous comment to the last meeting I think based on outlooks that we get right as we think about budget we need to think about it not from the context of what we have done and what we are right now but in terms of I mean there are ways I mean there's plate there's there's something called zero based budgeting right where you build your budget from the ground up and I really think we need to go back and think about that I mean you look at these these ratios that we have here compared they're districts around us and I think we've been operating from a place of let's just you know moving forward that we have and just trying to maintain and I think we need to rethink everything and that's I know that's a very difficult thing to do but I think that's cleaner than even thinking about like okay well next up is maybe a high school I think we need to think about in terms of overall what where do we where do we see ourselves ending up at the very end so that but that should I'm innocent just suggests that should also be a topic of conversation and see the reality of it I'm not saying that should be part of the conversation I'm just saying it's greater conversation I am gonna say wonderful one thing I I want to move forward with the Tea Cake model to get staff started in the direction that they need to said tk8 model tk6 clever sorry yes this sixth grade but I think more study sessions like this inviting the community teachers tea staff and parents for them to come and be able to voice their concerns and is very much needed so I am going to suggest that we do this again and you're seeing in the next several months so Madam President I am going to suggest that we have another another study session and that we I know we're here for two hours and it's at the end of our time but I think we should allow more than three minutes it possible for people to share their concerns I know the young woman with the UM that gave us this had more pen I mean she prepared she put the whole PowerPoint together for us so I am going to suggest that on we look into our ED code to see how much time longer time we can give our individuals that come and speak at our study sessions and so I want to suggest um that we have one very very soon looking at schedules yeah we'll just all get together for schedule and Linda if you could put together a kind of a timeline of with as Adrienne had requested so that was a six and it kind of gives us a general idea well so timeline but to be sure but but to be clear so so in the same way that I realize that we're kind of we as the board I've kind of being put on the spot I recognize that similarly I'm putting cabinet on the spot right now I recognize that but what I'm saying is I'm only comfortable moving forward with retaining sixth grade if at the same time we are also setting a timeline so so meaning now a timeline on when a plan can be you know it can be completed so as opposed to let's say yes to retaining sixth and then we'll get back to you on when we can have a plan so let me just suggest over the next step is first of all to know are you all in agreement that we should hire a demographer yes okay then the next step would be to know what that information bring it to the board make some recommendations and then hire somebody and then when I need to see for them but their work is when can they give us that information so the first step is to move forward with a demographer and once we know where their timeline is in terms of one date and get back to us then we can continue with the next steps if you're looking for specifics we're looking for like a like an end date like by the end of this school year we will have a plan that's what you're looking for best I can agree with that I think that's I think that's manageable and doable so what you're saying is that we need to have a comprehensive plan we need to have dates in place we need to have some more study sessions we need to go ahead and discuss this and because we in the next month I think we need to have another one another study session in the next two weeks we're looking at I mean because in reality I mean you refer back to the timeline remember right yeah and so for us to have more comprehensive status to have a comprehensive approach I'm moving forward not just keeping you know the sixth grade retaining the sixth grade at the elementary level you want to also speak about the pollow across across okay correct can I just say one thing you know I really really appreciate everyone being here actually when I came in I had my mind set I'm gonna be very honest about that but I appreciate all your input because I am very open-minded and did help me change my mind unseen I mean you all work there I don't work there I sit here making decisions but I like to hear parents you know staff you know a program doctor really helped me why you come in you're standing to the podium what you're three or five minutes of time and I really really appreciate that thank you my perspective is definitely that I see everything involves to take tk6 so I'm I'm on board with the tk6 also I agree with Adrienne as far as we need to have maybe by the next board meeting a solid dates on don't know and we need that during this week to discuss having a meeting that's not what I'm saying yeah no no you were saying you were saying that you wanted to have a solid no all right basically in it maybe I'm not verbalizing here correctly but I might I know your intent yes solid points along the along the way sure so what I what I am saying is I'm only comfortable moving forward with retaining sixth grade at the elementary school is if we say bye-bye June can we have a plan or by it would be September would it be and if we're saying that we don't know that we we have no idea because we have to speak to a demographer and I'm saying that I'm not comfortable retaining I'm sorry I just wanna say one thing I'm sorry I have to leave at 5:30 but I wanted to stay here and I don't mean to be rude but I have to drive to Monrovia and I really apologized I need to leave thank you I think it's really important that we set a date looking at a possible February 10th I know it's deaf development um but in the next - that's that's two weeks because we we can't let another month and you know another two to school board meetings because we're we're making decisions we're moving forward and the ball right now as we are giving direction to our cabinet to move forward to start looking at seniority is to start looking at this and start looking at the whole picture we also need to be it you know in in unison to be able to be able to come back and speak about this so I'm Madam President I'm looking at the timeline so in two weeks what so just you know for my tenth is a holiday its Lincoln's birthday its Lincoln's okay do you all have Catholic well missing Yolanda right now and what I'd really like to do is have be able to pull everybody say the next two days we will have a date for the new one we can we can do that yeah all right and can we also extend it from two hours to possibly I'm in reality three so that way we have ample time to give our speakers to go up and be able to speak and for us board members to be able to also speak thank you okay so just curious cabinet do you feel is it is it feasible to imagine that we could have a five-year plan that is developed by September of this year I think that's very feasible do you think it's feasible to look at August of this year it probably is tom the only the only challenge that is that staff is is typically are gone sometime during the summer time so we could run into that but I you know maybe at least by the second I would say the second meeting in August or maybe the first in September you know that to me seems doable okay cuz so I'm I am comfortable if we if we were to say that we could having comprehensive plan in place over the course of the next five plus years but by by September if I would be comfortable moving forward retaining sixth grade as long as we set that as a drop-dead date to have a plan in place personally I agree and along the I think it's also important to include our community in that plan absolutely which may include additional study session meetings specific to this conversation absolutely and yet again please reach out give us your responses that's what we live for is to serve you the community is so important to us so please one last thing I wanted to share is um before we depart challenges and sacrifice are two other things that require that are required right now III as I was speaking I I hear you in in emails I hear you when you're speaking up there I hear you I'm listening I'm receiving your information what you're feeling what you're sharing but sacrifice has to come from all of us and what does that look like well let's have a conversation and I think all of you guys for being here I really am really happy that you guys are you guys filled up the room this should be at every meeting this is these are your schools our schools together we can move forward so you guys have a happy Monday anybody else just to clarify so that we know what what direction is given where where are we leaving we're leaving I stated what I'm comfortable I think you said you you agree I don't know yeah we all agree so that would be all ready and nope it's just direction all right all right and thank you everybody okay are we going to vote I don't think we need to vote we direction that's not yes so I think we're good and thank you everybody for showing up and put the word out bring more people with you we'll get this out there all right it is 6:15 thank you
Gifford as being the our member our representative to South Coast what does this mean by having do they expect to expand programming and also I'm one of the big things that we look forward to is increased professional development sharing as well which they offer a lot like the sei courses etc yeah so that kind of thing but of course increased revenue as well having membership so it's it's a win-win for everyone yeah so the board hear it from these two schools and voted approval for them to join perfect thank you thank you we've got three more minutes we don't have enough time for our annual report anybody have any thing to discuss I'll do my update Guardi would you like to update I have a few things make sure it lasts for at least two minutes okay so we have our PD strands have been approved and curriculum office obviously is getting ready to send that out for early release day we'll continuing those strands once again the Dartmouth curriculum Council came together based on some feedback from previous years etc and student data and staff feedback and all of that so those are ready to go out and once again we will have some really tremendous PD offerings the curriculum instruction assessment group had recently met to really start talking about the social studies curriculum and standards and the shifts and all expected student outcomes and will be completing our k12 alignment in history and social studies with some of this work planning for summer reading is beginning already believe it or not and of course as we mentioned before we had started with the I stem clubs and they're up and running at all of our elementary schools and we're continuing the work with Highlander we've already talked about that and I know Michelle and Tracy have been working very hard in the schools with that with some of the walkthroughs etc and you might have seen on our Facebook page that kinder gotten a preschool registration is starting up so that information is on the Facebook page and our website for folks we recently attended the midwinter conference last week and of course the Commissioner was there which we're gonna kind of lead into a little bit of talk on the SOA in a minute but also we heard from presenter keynote presenter Jeff Lowrance who talked about the complex systems that we all are involved in and lead and and the landscape of public education today and how growing unrest and and the mental health issues and whatever and it was a wonderful keynote on that the aspect of leadership and also how leadership helps support their staff and faculty in the stress level that everyone is feeling and how we need to be kind to ourselves so self-care is a big topic coming forward and I think that is just stemming from all of the mental health issues that we're seeing not only in our students but our staff as well so that was a very good keynote that we heard from I guess some juniors are attending Dartmouth middle school tomorrow they're gonna be speaking to some of our students about the DECA program here so that's good we have had we have a partnership with our police officers as usual and officer Amanda Tavares who is looking to be an SRO in future years along with some of the dispatchers have developed a training for a small young children kindergarten preschool kids on the 911 one system so they met with some of our Prince principals this last week it's only it's Monday isn't and we'll be going to each of the Elementary's to present to the students so we were pleased about that I went to a peace rally last week at Cushman the kids did some singing and whatnot of course in honor of Martin Luther King Day we have kindness challenges happening and like talking slow enough or was still good I got enough time I have a little more to go kindness challenges this week in the elementary schools and of course I was reading Potter with a Super Bowl challenge and food that will go to the Council on Aging I'm sure our other Elementary's are doing it as well February 5th we're looking at global school day of play and this is a national movement and it prompted me to look at some TED talks and there was one by I found by Peter gray dr.
Peter gray who's done a lot of research on this the importance of play for our students and we all know that sometimes it's hard to say we need them to play more and then still say you know we have standards and expectations there's a fine balance but he and others like him and I think we see a lot of talk now with the technology issues and the the screen and the kids are addicted and the mental health and the depression and he's there waiting play has something to do with it as well that the lack of play like a free play not adult directed it's something we need to really as parents as well as educators to continue to advocate for so anyway once you get on those TED Talks there's so many but I found this one to be very interesting to really let our kids play and I know we play it all the time you know out in the woods for hours let's see what did I write there today Michelle and I attended the fourth annual on social-emotional conference was a half-day conference at a Sabet and heard from a couple of superintendents who have done a lot of work John Sylvan Bedford and the Wellesley superintendent as well a lot of work around that really talking about biases implicit bias discrimination and we've been talking about about this in our leadership team as well and we've already booked our keynote speaker for next year is someone that really the staff is going to absolutely love them people that have heard Adolf Brown will know what I'm talking about he'll be coming here but really speaks to us and gets to the core of what is it about implicit biases and things like that so again another topic that we all really need to pay attention to and then I think my last piece right now and the leading I'm gonna let Jim talk a little bit about it you all know about the student Opportunity Act and the work not only the money that was came to some districts but also one of the things that we are all going to have to do with our which again Jim will explain really isn't any money we will have to create a plan districts are not receiving really anything we'll have like a two page plan this was stemming from the commissioners talk last week and but we still have to file it you will all have to be asked to approve it in March and then we file it by April but some of it can just be we've continuing the work we're doing around the social-emotional or whatever it might be but I asked Jim to kind of talk about that a little bit during this report so thank you done Gifford so all districts did receive something we received thirty dollars a student which amounts to a hundred hundred and five thousand dollars about a 1% increase in chapter 70 spending so we had had some discussion a while back on this and what it was gonna look like for us and the reality is that you know we are not one of the ones to really benefit from this we probably would have received the same exact increase if the legislation had not been enacted so that's unfortunate so the the with the governor's budget they came out with the cherry sheet which I which I shared with you which shows the receipts and end assessments and offsets that they come to the town and the reality is that there's a decrease to the town about $30,000 right now the town's looking at that there may be there may be a reporting issue with a number on the town side that may have a little bit of impact but not anything significant so that certainly does not help us over all the hundred thousand is chapter 70 funds and as dr.